Jutland: 95 years already!

General naval discussions that don't fit within any specific time period or cover several issues.
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RF
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

Post by RF »

Economics certainly was a major factor. That could be seen in Woodrow Wilsons' fourteen points, where he advocated freedom of the seas, so that blockades could not in future interdict US trade with nations at war, so the US could trade with both or all sides. A good policy for US arms manufacturers!
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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Malarkey. Britain's resources in the U.S. were exhausted by the time the Empire started borrowing money from the U.S. And as far as cashing in on Imperial possessions do you suppose the U.S. would show up in Ottawa and present an IOU from a defeated Britain? And the Canadian government would say, oh yes, take Saskatchewan and Manitoba in repayment? Wall Street would hardly want administering a scattered handful of Caribbean Islands in exchange for the hard cash they loaned GB to carry on fighting.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

Post by frankwl »

This is just for Karl. You have a point about Wilson who is generaly regarded as a saint. Find out what you can about Florence Labadia (not sure about the spelling).
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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frankwl wrote:Malarkey. Britain's resources in the U.S. were exhausted by the time the Empire started borrowing money from the U.S. And as far as cashing in on Imperial possessions do you suppose the U.S. would show up in Ottawa and present an IOU from a defeated Britain? And the Canadian government would say, oh yes, take Saskatchewan and Manitoba in repayment? Wall Street would hardly want administering a scattered handful of Caribbean Islands in exchange for the hard cash they loaned GB to carry on fighting.
Yes, here we go again.... another anti-British diatribe.

frankwl, the US will look after its own interests in the occident. That would mean, if necessary, outright annexation of Canada, which was still a colony of Britain (with home rule). The US did in 1917 ''persuade'' the Danish government to trade them the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. No problems for Wall Street financiers there. There were no economic interests for the US to gain, just a determination to keep the Germans from taking them first.

A handful of scattered Caribbean islands? Well, lets look - Jamaica, the world's largest source of bauxite; Trinidad, with its oilfields; together with the other British and French islands in the Caribbean, plus Guyana, which offer naval and air bases (as the US in WW2 obtained under Lend-Lease) as well as plenty of plantations for the US fruit companies. And why stop at the Caribbean - plenty of British strategic and mineral interests to acquire in the likes of Nigeria, Ghana and in the Asia/Oceania areas of the world......

This is of course way off the subject of Jutland, so I shall stop now.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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Anti-British? I'm so pro British I've been in fist fights in my younger years about who won the Battle of Jutland. I grew up in the Empire and the Commonwealth and I still stand up if someone plays God Save The Queen, whether it's in Ottawa or Melbourne. But I don't let that blind me. I'm not bloodthirsty but I've always wished it was KGV and Warspite that confronted Bismarck in the Denmark Straights.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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PS: Australia is he biggest producer of bauxite, folliowed by Brazil. And in 1918 nobody cared much about aluminum, or aluminium.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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frankwl wrote: ..........I've always wished it was KGV and Warspite that confronted Bismarck in the Denmark Straights.
KGV and Warspite would be a very interesting combination, especially if KGV was flagship and thus the '' leading ship''.... my guess is that Bismarck would be sunk and Prinz Eugen, by virtue of being ahead of Bismarck would get clean away.
Last edited by RF on Fri Jul 01, 2011 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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frankwl wrote:PS: Australia is he biggest producer of bauxite, folliowed by Brazil. And in 1918 nobody cared much about aluminum, or aluminium.
This is going off thread, so I will confine myself to saying that today's distribution of production isn't that relevant to a situation say ninety years ago. Jamaica was the leading source of bauxite up to the 1980's and the USA the biggest importer. And yes, immediately after WW1 it wasn't the most important strategic mineral, but not totally irrelevant either. That would start to change before WW2 - and especially during it, as Hitler was to discover when Hungary became Germany's only source.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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Okay, RF, can we have a private Washington Naval Treaty between us? I have a 40 year career in print, being sometimes attacked by very competent media people, politicians, churchmen, military and even bikers theatening my life. I don't much care what you say about me as I'm sure you don't give a hoot what I say about you. But seriously, everything I've ever posted on this wonderful site you have hunted down and attacked with some personal remarks that hurt. What did I ever do to you? I've learned so much in just a short time on this site and I want to keep learning but can't if you keep acting like a troll. If you don't like my writing style, well get in line, but stop trying to hurt me personally.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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This is exactly what I mean about letting BS get in the way of discussion. I'm all prepared to continue hating you (RF) and you come back with an intelligent, thoughtful response to one of my "ifs" about Bismarck and the Denmark Straits (sorry about the earlier mispelling but I used to have proofreaders). The KGVs were mostly untested except for the tragedy of Prince of Wales and Repulse alone without air cover against the might of the Japanese fleet air arm (heavens sake they put away seven U.S. battleships in a morning). But ship to ship Denmark Straits might have been different given different ships. Duke of York proved the worth of KGVs when it caught Scharnhost. And Warspite was tough as hell, considering the pounding it survived at Jutland or the near fatal hit from a remote controlled bomb in the Med I doubt if she would have gone blooey like Hood from a 15 inch salvo from Bismarck. Bismarck was a great ship but even malfunctioning Prince of Wales hurt her and what Warspite's eight 15 inch guns and KGV's 10 14 inchers might have done is ... well, speculation. And Warspite was always a damned good shot.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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frankwl wrote:This is exactly what I mean about letting BS get in the way of discussion. I'm all prepared to continue hating you (RF) and you come back with an intelligent, thoughtful response to one of my "ifs" about Bismarck and the Denmark Straits (sorry about the earlier mispelling but I used to have proofreaders). The KGVs were mostly untested except for the tragedy of Prince of Wales and Repulse alone without air cover against the might of the Japanese fleet air arm (heavens sake they put away seven U.S. battleships in a morning). But ship to ship Denmark Straits might have been different given different ships. Duke of York proved the worth of KGVs when it caught Scharnhost. And Warspite was tough as hell, considering the pounding it survived at Jutland or the near fatal hit from a remote controlled bomb in the Med I doubt if she would have gone blooey like Hood from a 15 inch salvo from Bismarck. Bismarck was a great ship but even malfunctioning Prince of Wales hurt her and what Warspite's eight 15 inch guns and KGV's 10 14 inchers might have done is ... well, speculation. And Warspite was always a damned good shot.

..... I hold WARSPITE in high esteem - one of the toughest and hardest fighting capital ships of big gun era. But I don't think she would have been the best choice to send after BISMARCK - too slow and no better protected than HOOD, if that. On the other hand, BISMARCK's good luck was that PoW was a brand new ship, with severe and unresolved main battery technical problems and a barely worked up crew.

My opinion.

B
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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frankwl, I am not hunting you, I am not attacking you. Neither am I aware of making personal remarks against you, all I have done is to try and correct some of your posts when you get carried away and make points that are either historically out of context or not seemingly historically appropriate. If you feel I have insulted you, I am happy to say ''sorry.''

For example you referred to the sinking of POW and Repulse by ''the Japanese fleet air arm.'' Now it is entirely correct that they were sunk by concentrated air attack. Another forum member commented some months earlier in another thread that POW/Repulse were sunk by Jap carrier planes.
Japan had two air forces in WW2, one Army and one Navy. It was Japanese Army planes (the Ghenzan air corps ?) that attacked and sank POW/Repulse, operating from land bases in what is now southern Vietnam. Japan had no carriers at all in that region as at that date.

Not a personal attack, simply a correction.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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RF:
KGV and Warspite would be a very interesting combination, especially if KGV was flagship and thus the '' leading ship''.... my guess is that Bismarck would be sunk and Prinz Eugen, by virtue of being ahead of Bismarck would get clean away.
Warspite was a great ship, don't think the British had some better than she. Hell... she made the longest shot ever too! So I must say that she could have performed much better than Hood.
KGV??? Not even on May 27th she made that fine, neither. Took a long time to hit Bismarck and from what we know she didn't performed that great. Those quadruples always gave problems.
I will never say, though, that this pair would have sunk Bismarck at DS. Nope. Could have been a different outcome, yes, maybe one without so much destruction and damage on the British side, but not a victory neither.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

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Karl, you are I think overlooking the fact that KGV is ''the leading ship'' which as such would draw Bismarck's fire and leave Warspite with basically some free target practice.

I wasn't thinking of KGV's guns at all in this scenario, any hit by that ship would be a bonus. Its just that it leaves Warspite to get on with the job without coming under serious fire.
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Re: Jutland: 95 years already!

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

RF,

I think that being a hypothetial scenario (and being so if OT here) I can come ans say that yours is true if Tovey would be the one admiral at KGV, but it could not be and be Holland and that he might like to use the veteran Warspite instead. But to get in that is again to write a screenplay instead of a hypothetical scenario. Let's say that your point is valid.
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