RE: Given a chance would you kill baby Hitler?
November 14, 2015 at 4:15 am
(This post was last modified: November 14, 2015 at 4:20 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(November 14, 2015 at 1:24 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Sure, Germany had a few good fighter planes but it didn't have any long range heavy bombers.
That's not to say it didn't have an air force of considerable influence. Long-range heavy bombers weren't the only, or even most useful, aircraft types.
(November 14, 2015 at 1:24 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: It had some submarines but it didn't have a fleet of battleships and aircraft carriers. It didn't even have any row boats to use to invade England.
I think you missed my point. If Germany hadn't spent so much time, money, labor and metal building the Tirpitz class, the Scharnhorst class, and the Hipper class, there could have been a hell of a lot more U-boats handy in 1942. Operation Paukenschlag sank a couple of million tons of commerce with seven subs -- and that was all Doenitz had available. What if he had had fifty?
Aircraft carriers in the ETO were pretty much irrelevant, too, except for ferry duties a la Wasp. Taranto was the exception because it was, indeed, a surprise. Not for nothing did the Americans assign only CVEs and one obsolete CV to Torch; Constricted waters mean carriers are not only not necessary, but are more vulnerable ... as the Limeys learnt.