Three years of war, hundreds of millions of dollars (1940's) and tens of thousands of deaths - interesting definition of feeble you got goin' on there.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'

No years of war. No deaths. The end of the Depression. And the Nazis had reached the end of their rope. They weren't just feeble, they were a boon to America.

The Luftwaffe had teh initial advantage before teh war gegan and lost it due to slow production and poor choices (they didn't build 4-engine bombers).

German planes were not as reliable (underpowered, bad gaskets and electrical systems, etc.). Petrol quality was low too.

The Battle was won by Air Marshall Dowling (in some ways) because he chose to build radar stations in 1936 rather than fighter planes. Other British advantages include: they could repair planes at home; longer time on target; personnel that was shot down they got back; British pilots were roughly equal to their German counterparts (Germans have the edge for about one month); and Germany never really understood how the radar system worked.

Sorry for the lengthy post.

The Battle was won by the Channel.

That the Royal Navy was preventing Sea Lion is self-evident. That was the entire reason behind the Battle of Britain - destroy Britain's air cover so the Luftwaffe could bomb the Royal Navy to smithereens. The war in the Pacific proved that airpower will decimate seapower. If the RAF lost control of the air, the Royal Navy would not have saved Britain.

Germany did not need to mount an impressive amphibious invasion. Britain lacked adequate coastal defenses, had lost its heavy weapons at Dunkirk, and was ill supplied (the Home Guard did not even have weapons). Even if there was enough of the Royal Navy able to disrupt supply chains, the Luftwaffe could fly material to captured airfields in this scenario.

One could postulate lots of things to bog up the Wehrmacht, but none could alter that a German landing would have been disastrous and would have emboldened the peace party to cut a deal with Hitler. In any case, it would have neutralized Britain's ability to project power to thwart the Nazis elsewhere.

So how close was the Battle of Britain itself? Close enough that it was plausible that the Germans would win it. That they did not is not proof that they were predestined to lose.

Believe what you want to believe oj. The channel didn't stop us.

Bartman:

Bingo!

Chris:

To the contrary, it was never plausible. The Nazis were the ones incapable of projecting power, which is why they just dithered around with a desultory air war. Of course, Hitler didn't care about Britain anyway, so they were never even going to try taking it.

It may be the sinus medicine I'm on oj (I'm a little thick most of the time but moreso today), but aren't you saying that if the channell didn't stop us why would it have stopped Hitler? Or did you just contradict your earlier post?

No. I agreed with your insightful point that the Channel couldn't even slow us but did rather easily stop the Nazis.

Ah! Thanks oj. Getting over a bought of flu you understand.

If there had been Japanese soldiers at Normandy Eisenhower's D-Day invasion would have been a disastrous failure. But they weren't so it succeeded. Nuff said.

Excellent. Finally some clear thing about force projection capability.

Add to this the strategic unreadiness of the Germans is 1939. Fortunately, they were drawn into general war by Poland five years ahead of schedule.

I recall that we had covered this ground not too long ago. Nevertheless, that wonderful British Navy quote is worth revisiting. Apropos a threatened invasion by Napoleon, the head of the Admiralty remarked, "I don't say the French can't come, just that they can't come by sea." In 1940, the Royal Navy checked the invasion, the Luftwaffe treatened to check the Royal Navy, and the RAF checked the Luftwaffe.

Would a few years have made a difference here? We should recall that the first major warship sunk by an air-lauched guided anti-ship missile was a captured Italian Battleship hit be a German rocket after it was turned over to the allies. Perhaps the Germans would have fared better in the channel with squadrons of Me262's coming in at wave-top with ship-killing missiles.

They'd also have needed both a far larger population of Germans and/or a political ideology that wasn't dependent on identity.

Just getting back here, and I see that OJ has just wished away all the years of war and treasure that it took to defeat Germany.

The fact that we defeated them soundly did not make them feeble. Unless you understand everyone to be feeble except for us, and that feeble means something other than what most people think it means.

Didn't take anything to defeat them. They'd lost by the time we got in. They simply weren't a serious threat.

h,

The Japanese were on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Didn't make a difference. Why would it have been so at Normandy?

By Pacvific war standards, the fire support and command control arrangements for the Normandy landings were poorly thought out. The First Infantry would never have gotten off the beach if it weren't for the destroyers moving in close on their own initiative, and for a lot of uncommon valor at the squad and platoon level on the ground.

By the time Hitler became serious about invading Britain, the window of opportunity had long closed. They needed to start the prep for SeaLion while the invasion of France was ongoing by diverting some of the intheatre airpower to the softening up of Brit airpower and her channel naval forces. Combined with the later futile attacks on British cities, and the concomitant losses of trained pilots, the invasion of Britain was a non-starter from Sept of '40 on. If the Germans could have landed just a single corp of 3 infantry divisions in Sept of 1940, with attendant supply, the UK would have been doomed. An excellent read on a hypothetical invasion of Britain is Invasion by Kenneth Macksey.
http://www.amazon.com/Invasion-Softbound-Greenhill-Military-Paperbacks-Macksey/dp/1853673617/sr=1-1/qid=1161814935/ref=sr_1_1/103-9683282-1550208?ie=UTF8&s=books

There never was a window.

Mike:

Sure, but D-Day was just a pointless bone thrown to Stalin anyway.

Iwo, Okinawa, Normandy. The guys just got it done. The rest is speculation. And prayers of Thanksgiving. Shiloh...
Gettysburg...Vicksburg...Cold Harbor,...pick your choice.

Not sure about my point, but bless 'em all

oj,
Right, there never was a "window".
But, all this apple orange crap about fighters doesn't ring true.
German fighters, superior to what the English had available in quantity, Hurricanes, but inferior to the coming on line Spitfires, were only there to protect the bombers from the Brits.
The fact is they ended up not capabable of doing that, and the British Fighter Command forced the Luftwaffe into non-strategic bombing to the benefit of the Allies.
The whole "fighter vs fighter" is a strawman!
Early WWII fighter use (Battle of Britain) was to, one, protect offensive bomber attacks, and, two, to defend against offensive bomber attacks.
Had the RAF ceded/lost mastery of the skies over England and her Channel, the Royal Navy would have been much more unlikely to have been able to defend against a Channel crossing.
Fortunately, Hitler opened an Eastern Front rather than doing what was required in the West.
This, not the Royal Navy which was incapable of protecting the convoys providing Englands lifeblood,was the saviour of Britain from invasion.
Additionally, British rule, later supplemented by the US, of the skies over England and the Channel is all that allowed Operation Overlord to succeed.
I'm always at a loss to understand those who denigrate the RAF's monumental success. The Royal Navy, it took it's entire Atlantic Fleet to defeat one German "pocket battleship", Bismark, is to be given the garland for the lack of an invasion?

yes, had the Brits not been willing to resist, the Channel not existed, the Germans had a different form of government and not had to maintain control of the continent and fend off the Soviets they could have beat Britain.