"It's so stupid it works" applies here, I think. They did several incredibly dumb maneuvers that nobody thought anyone would be crazy enough to try, and that is why it worked. Once everyone caught up to the fact they were lunatics this stopped working.
@@wfb.subtraktor311 It reminds me of the Japanese kamikaze attacks - they only worked until the Americans caught on that the Japanese planes would dive right for them and adjusted their anti-aircraft fire accordingly
Doesn't make me wonder at all. I just consider the fact that if the 3rd Reich is this inept yet curve stomped the other continentals then how useless was the the Benelux, French, Scandinavian & eastern Europe with exception of polish & Czechoslovakia pilot being good but meh planes! Germany & the Axis did as well as they did in ww2 because everyone but the anglosphere had no idea what the fvck they were doing expecting peace in their time. Si vis pacem parabellum=If you want peace prepare for war! Only the anglosphere mainly Britain took this to some heart. Canada, Australia, south Africa & new Zealand sort of joined along for the ride with million volunteer Indians. Mind they had time to organise being geographically isolated from the Axis unlike Britain. USA just joined because the Japanese gave them a bloody nose being the greatest naval defeat in history/pearl harbour so far. Honestly no other power could have fought after that disaster & the USA only managed to shrug it off because of there insane domestic industry back in the 1940's. The USA is simultaneous post ww2 the most powerful militarily in the world while the most incompetent! The USA greatest strength & weakness is even they don't know what they are doing as no one follows any orders in the US armed branches so you cant predict them as nothing is to be predicted! What I find more interesting how Germany lost but how the USA kept fighting relatively undamaged after countless fvck up's! USA plan=''bullSh!te your way to victory'' & use Hollywood to make a crushing defeat look like a minor set back. Yanks are what make me wonder!
The Battle of Britain was a landmark event in the history of shooty planes and is THE classic example of how to successfully perform defensive air operations. Many of the fundamental principles the British used are still in force across all competent air forces today Needless to say, hyped for the next video, then :D
See also - Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers and his early warning system along with fighter aircraft dispatch methods. He started his system with the Nationalist Chinese Air Force even before the Flying Tigers mercenaries were recruited. He even taught his pilots NOT to dogfight the lightweight, Japanese, "turn and burn" fighters. The P-40's were to climb above the Japanese, dive through their formation, then pull up and return for another run. It was classic "boom and zoom" while the other Allied air forces across the Pacific Theater were being massacred while trying to fight the Japanese on equal terms in turning fights.
Beppo Schmitt is such a hilarious character. Also, I should mention that the German intelligence apparatus was split into something like 6 or 7 different parts. One for each branch, the Gestapo, the Abwehr and then Goering had his own personal one whose name escapes me. AND NONE OF THEM SPOKE TO ONE ANOTHER EDIT: B-Dienst, Sicherheitsdienst, Gestapo, Abwehr, and then each branch of the military. Also they are split up again because you have the high command for each branch which is then split off from the political branch OKW. So technically there are two high commands. One for each branch who all operate independently and then the OKW which is a joint command that technically has authority coming from the Fuhrer but isn’t directly in command of the military itself.
Basically 5th Abteilung (Beppo the Clown's unit) didn't know abour radar but 3rd Abteilung knew perfectly well and attacked it on the 11th, but didn't know about how it was used that 4th Abteilung did know but also didn't know about radar....
A cunning plan to be sure. As cunning as a fox that has gone to the university of Cambridge to get a degree of cunning and now works at the government office of cunning planning?
Also remember that when the big raids against London happened in early September the Luftwaffe aircrews had been told the RAF was down to its last 100 aircraft! So when they were met over southern England by nearly 600 fighters it was understandably a bit of a shock.
I saw the Defiant at RAF museum midlands and I fell in love instantly. I just wanted to stroke her fuselage and tell her she did her best. Don't worry Defiant I will always be here for you, don't listen to the haters on the internet.
@@HardThrasher its not true that the Germans shoot down the Defiants when they first saw them. The Defiants won the engagement, ( The Germans laughed so much they hade to return to base)
Ah, the Boulton Paul Defiant. A perfectly good aircraft for what it was designed for but totally out matched by what Harold Macmillan would describe as "events". It was designed to attack unescorted bombers and the concept of non forward firing guns would later be used by German night fighters against the RAF. No-one expected to have to fight single seat German fighter escorts as the range from Germany to East Anglia was too great, and is the reason why 12 Group was theoretically the main group. However no-one expected France to fall, which meant that Fighter Command was caught facing the wrong direction. The change in strategic direction caused by the fall of France should have seen the Defiants posted to 13 Group where they would not have had to face German fighters.
Urrgghhh - kind of Like, in theory dividing shooting and flying up is smart, putting more concentration of bullets into the sky is good, and having extra eyeballs is good. But in every single way it was executed and built it was awful. They had one good sortie when some 109s thought they were Hurricanes and got the shock of their, now very short, lives when they got blown away by circling Defiants aaaannnd then 50% of the RAF’s entire Defiant strength was wiped out in about 5 minutes, with 12 dead crew. The night fighters of the later war had bloody great upward shooting cannon but that wasn't their only armament and they had radar, albeit rubbish radar. So all in all they were terrible
When the Luftwaffe realised how to fight it, the RAF did the sensible thing and made it a night fighter, which meant it was actually fulfilling the role it was designed for, only at night and only requiring field modifications like anti-glare plates.
Well yes and no, because it was so slow it couldn't actually perform the intercept unless it flew standing patrols and was lucky enough to be in the right bit of the sky. The result was they only got one kill, and that in December. What they, and all other night fighters needed, was AI radar which the MkII did get but even with a better engine it wasn't really much cop and that didn't turn up until it was really too late to do a lot. It's one of those 'cool ideas, bloody useless in reality' planes that got spat out in the 30s and 40s
I’m properly hooked. It’s so weird to be caught up in the middle of one war and be so into the lectures about an older one. Top job, can’t wait for the next one. Glory to Ukraine.
You need to teach history. Gawd I can only imagine how much better my life would have been if my bloody teachers had been as interesting... keep it up!
If we take the toll Stalingrad has had on Tik as reference, reviewing the Spanish civil war would send a dozen strong men to an early grave. Respectfully.
You have a great style of presentation and sense of humour. Also I really appreciate that you'll sometimes give specific book recommendations in videos and in the comments. I've taken a look at a few so far, and I've yet to be disappointed.
Another key aspect was the RAFs repair service, which again under Beaverbrook was able to return damaged aircraft back into service must quicker that the Luftwaffa.
Love your Vids, please don't sleep and make more. I don't know if you've heard Douglas Adams speak but you sound like him. Took me a while to place it but I had 'Dirk Gently' on cassette and memorised it as a kid. A similar sense of absurdist humour too.
I am going to annoy many Canadians here, but one of the most important roles Canada played for the Commonwealth when it came to airpower, it was the Pilot and Aircrew training programs that were set up in Canada fairly early in the war. It was huge, as those aircrew and pilots had a safe place to train. That is not to denigrate other things the Canadians did, like their huge role in Anti Submarine Warfare, not only the tactics but also the number of hulls, and the very real achievements on land. I am not even going to go into the activities and value of Australian, South African, Indian, West African and other Empire/Commonwealth. Here I am just commenting on that single facet, the absolutely vital role Canada as a safe place to train pilots and aircrew was very important in the context of this video. I bring this up because my Great Uncle (my Grandfather brother) survived two full tours as a Lancaster rear gunner, more importantly though in between those combat tours he was sent to a training squadron, in Canada.....
Very, very important. Probably a discussion more about Bomber Command rather than Fighter Command, but it did play a role in replacement pilots in 1940
They contributed a lot given the size of their GDP and populace (speaking as an American near the border). Not to mention that Manitoba and Saskatchewan held a lot of German POWs.
Your just great...🤣🤣 You deserve your own TV documentary on Aircraft, tanks, guns, battles... You have a style that's close to Monty python, interwoven with Spike milligan, and ultimately a very British attitude, you also know your peas and carrots.. Please keep up your work.. 👍🤣🤣
This was an excellent video, thanks for posting it. Most stories that have come out about the air force of Nazi Germany seems to focus on individual pilots, getting this view of the high command explains why that is.
Waiting for this more than the Champions’ final… PS: for our US friends it’s like the biggest football event in Europe except we also call it football and not soccer.
You know what, you need to do a Q&A so we can direct questions about your favorite military fact and or try to work out what kind of metal you listen too.
The more I learn about the WWII German military and their senior “leadership”, the more impressed I am that they managed to accomplish what they did during 1939/1940, and the less surprised I am that they were eventually (inevitably) crushed.
Outstanding series so far; looking forward to the next. I've also waited 45 years for someone to make a presentation on how the B17 was kind of shit, ever since coming to that conclusion myself as an adolescent model-builder and comparing stats on different heavies. This was in an age of lavish B17 worship in the US (where I was), which seemed to give the B24 unaccountably little credit, vs its actual role in all theatres, and where one needed to watch British documentaries to even learn the Lancaster or Halifax (or RAF Bomber Command) existed. The whole WW2 narrative at that time was so bizarre and incoherent that even I could figure that out, based mostly on what I learned about various weapons systems by making models of them, plus whatever first-hand, specialist accounts I could lay hands on. This was also a time (say mid-late 70s) when nearly all of the front-line veterans were still alive, up through at least junior officers. I have no idea what they must have thought of the bizarro narratives of the war that we were all fed, including the runaway fetishization of the Nazi War Machine and its Wunderwaffe, which somehow still managed to lose the war because of something something Patton, B17s and Sherman tanks (and the gritty determination, wry humor and chewing gum of the GIs).
Speed is life but maneuverability is as important. Having followed you through parts 1 & 2 I can't wait to move on to part 3 which I am going to do when I've made a cup of coffee.
The Buffalo was used by the AVG in Burma against the Japanese and....did ok actually. I mean they were all shot down in the end but got quite a few kills
@HardThrasher The problem with the Buffalo was that if it wasn't equipped with amour, self-sealing fuel tanks, or radios, they were very good performers. If these vital items were installed, they made the aircraft unable. Are you sure that the AVG used Buffalos? If this is the case, bear in mind that they were an all-star team. I know that the RAF and the Australians used them in the Far East with bad results. The Finns put them to good against the Russians.
Yeah, I'm not arguing they were any good 😀 But yeah, this was the Burmese bit of the AVG, not the chaps based in China who I think started with kitty hawks (someone will put me right if I've got that wrong)
Hi there, "Blackadder Goes Forth" is my favourite war sit-com, I've watched this so many times coupled with my knack for seeing words. "Permission to write home immediately sir, this is the first brilliant cunning plan that the Baldricks have ever had, for centuries we've tried and they've all turned out to be utter pigs swill!" A ridiculous order given by Hermann Goering had decreed that fighters must accompany bombers. Alas the Messerschmitt Bf.109 was designed to fly at speed, not so slowly and Adolf Galland once had described Goering as a clown and a buffoon, not surprising with the skin full of morphine he was on!
Triptych of three photos at 10:40 could be rearranged to place Hans-Jürgen Stumpff in the center. Then it would be a time-lapse series showing 1) what it was like to meet Hitler, 2) how one felt when gradually realizing that he wasn't god, and then, at last, 3) when one finally understands what the man is really about.
One point relevant to the sorry state of production is that the German military wasn't anticipating going to war in the West until 41 or 42. But Austrian painter jumped early for some reason that I can't remember. As for the RAF's level of organisation - it wasn't just better than the Luftwaffe, it was years ahead of everyone else and the basic architecture is still in use today... by everyone. Dowding was a genius.
@@HardThrasher One of the things which I think is often ignored, in part to feed the 'plucky underdog standing alone against the mighty boche' myth is that the British military was a pretty fearsome machine in 1939. Biggest navy in the world, the only fully mechanized fully professional standing army (albeit one designed to police the colonies), and a wholly independent air force with a state of the art defence network. For example, Sebag-Montefiore's woeful book about Dunkirk devotes the first 2 chapters to mocking the BEF in 1940 as travelling to war in buses and using WW1 era kit... somehow going full Wehraboo for the Germans walking to war with looted Czech kit.
Austrian painter jumped early because the Nazi war machine needed a steady flow of conquests to sustain its spending, and von Manstein pitched a high risk, high reward plan like Austrian painter loved.
I agree with your facts (as a very interested amatuer in RAF history) but it is your delivery that I admire most. I found my self laughing so much I had to go back to listen to the next bit because when you moved on I was still laughing at your last quip, and this from me who is famed for raising no more than a smile. Absolutely brilliant, please keep them coming like this. Martin B.
Utterly wonderful! I recall reading a book entitled "Modern Warfare" published in 1938 or 1939, which talked about just how revolutionary the Hurricane was when it appeared as its eight machineguns were more than double of any other fighter in the world at that time,
I've lived and had a career in Germany since I migrated here 20 years ago and all that time my approach to the language has been exactly as you describe.
Had the Luftwaffe tried to attack the Royal Navy they would have failed miserably. At Dunkirk they managed to sink just six British destroyers, and they were effectively stationary targets. Destroyers moving at 30 knots are a bit of a harder prospect, especially since the Luftwaffe didn't have an armour piercing bomb until 1941. The Kriegsmarine had a total of 10 destroyers available to invade England, the rest of their destroyers having been sunk in Norway. The British had more than that just in Dover, and had about 80 destroyers in the south east alone. Sealion was a non-starter.
You're delivery and timing eclipses your excellent historical knowledge. There are so many people on RU-vid who can sound like they're talking knowledgeably about World War II, but very few that can write decent scripts and fewer still that can deliver them in a manner that is simultaneously erudite and ridiculous. Bravo! P.S. Pablo Neruda wrote: "Perhaps this war will pass like the others which divided us. Like the others that left us dead, killed us, along with the killers. But the shame of this time puts its burning fingers to our faces. Who can erase the ruthlessness hidden in innocent blood?" Entertaining RU-vid videos about World War II?
The phrase "dumb luck", comes to mind in regards to the Luftwaffa. I believe it was Napoleon who said he'd choose a lucky General over a good one, but the Germans added a level of incompetence (specifically the leadership) that is stunning
@HardTrasher What book(s) would you recommend as a ‘must read’ regarding the Battle of Britain? Would that be something like the “Most dangerous enemy” by Stephen Bungay?
So weirdly there aren't many over view histories, at least not recent ones; Bungay's book is the outstanding example (don't tell anyone but I'm using it a lot), and James Holland published one recently that's 80% not about the battle but the bits which are, are good. There's a lot of memoirs or collections of writings about the battle that appeared around the early 2000s which are superb; Geoffrey Wellum's First Light being the outstanding example, but Pete Townsend's writings are well worth a read too (also for what he doesn't say) Hope that helps
This was a refreshing new take on the Battle of Britain. The English Channel was the main obstacle, followed by the Royal Navy. I am taking nothing away from Fighter Command and the fighter command and control system here--but as was pointed out in the video, all the RAF had to do was survive long enough to interfere with cross-Channel ground troop movements by water or air. Next installment, please.
I've always found Bunnahabhain to go down quite easily. An old pal bought me a rare Laphroaig bottling last Xmas though, which "benefited from a little water", and brought up the brass on my front door nicely. 👍
@@HardThrasher I've tried several times over the decades to "acquire" a taste for scotch, but never encountered one that wasn't akin to drinking paint stripper. Do you have any specific recommendations for me to try out?
Really interesting, and a great deal of information of which I was unaware. I never really understood that the German staff in HQ was in such disarray. However, I think they had many competent field commanders in all branches. Yet poorly led , supplied and supported with trained servicemen.
Couldn’t help but feel a little chastised at 6:30 as l AM one of said idiots. I’m not really a defender of that admittedly shocking fighter. However it did find itself in a circumstance that it was never really designed for. Feel free to call me an idiot again though. Even so I really enjoyed this! Looking forward to part 3.
We all have our afflictions to bear - I have a very soft spot for the English Electric Lighting for no good reason, it was objectively OK at the end of its life and awful at the start and yet 50,000ft zoom climb baby!
@@HardThrasher Oh, baby. Having seen a Lightning take off, tuck it's bits in, hold level in full reheat for two seconds, and then pull smoothly vertical until invisible on a cloudless afternoon, and then be followed by a Phantom that tried the same thing and could only manage a climb of about 25 degrees, all at the end of a Biggin Hill airshow in the 1970s, I'm right with you on the Lightning. I know it had about 5 minutes of fuel left and probably had to land at Northolt, but quite a show.
Impressive. I stand by my opinion of the Defiant - god damn your eyes sir! It was loved by it’s pilots (admittedly less so by it’s gunners ) and had a long and useful - if not glamorous - career in RAF service. Including night fighter duties where it’s turret performed ‘Schrager Musik’ duties long before the Hun came up with the Teutonic term. Okay, the chances of it FINDING a bomber were slim - but if it did… You can’t say that about the bloody Battle…
The only critique I can think of (and this is really nitpicking, I readily confess), is I am not so sure that speed is truly "life" any more in the air. It is absolutely important, but it might be sliding into second place compared to avionics/sensors/data-tracking, since we seem to be approaching the point where your primary threat is being blown out of the sky by a smart, self correcting guided missile that will *always* , all things equal, be faster, more agile, and whatnot, fired by a plane using data-linking from another plane or drone that wasn't even in the same *time zone* that you were. (I.E. "He who gets spotted first, dies first.") But that is me being beyond hair splitting on this. XD Awesome video. Thank you so much for putting it out. :)
And so the Brits radar screen allowed them to spot the Nazis first. Thank dog, that the Bellend chappy (I refuse to name the turd) wasn't in command at such a crucial juncture.
The only thing I take umbrage with is the idea that there was, "A reasonable chance that the Germans would have invaded Britain." Of course, no one knew this at the time, but it was a pipe dream. It was almost completely impossible for the Germans to float the sea lift capacity necessary to even attempt to cross the channel and go ahead with Sea Lion, and the Kreigsmarine knew as well. The important part is that people THOUGHT it could happen, and that is what makes the Battle of Britain so extraordinary.
I remember reading that the *first* battle went pretty well for the BP Defiant. The Germans mistook them for Hurricanes and got shot up. It was the second battle where most of the Defiants were shot down.
Yes in fairness the inital encounter went...less badly. Basically the Luftwaffe got a nasty surprise in the first 5 minutes, worked out what was going on and then started head on attacks which buggered the Defiants. That was all one engagement over Dunkirk. There were then some other actions where the Defiants did get some kills but took grevious losses
