Good points, redcoat. However, Britain can't cancel her battleship program easily, because Italy and Japan are building 4 fast new battleships between them, and Britain needs to counter them, since she can't rely completely on either France or America to help protect the British Empire if it is attacked by Italy and Japan.
Britain couldn't afford to cancel more than 2 of her 5 King George V class battleships, and even that is taking a big risk. Still, for each cancelled battleship, Britain could probably build about 20 convoy escorts.
The Royal Navy was much better prepared for war than the Kreigsmarine at the time of the Munich crisis in September 1938. The British Army was very small and had few modern tanks but was more or less ready - while the German tank arm had about 1500 light tanks, and about 100 Pzkpw III's and IV's.
However, the main issue for Britain was the Luftwaffe, which was larger and much more modern than the RAF, which in 1938 had only 3 squadrons of Hurricanes and 1 squadron of Spitfires, while all other fighter squadrons still had Gladiator and Gauntlet biplanes. It was the same story in the bomber squadrons - the Battle, Blenheim, and Hampden had only just started to enter squadron service. Whereas Germany had hundreds of Bf109s, Ju87s, Do17s and He111's in service. Also the British radar network was incomplete and still suffering teething technical difficulties.
The British believed that the Luftwaffe could deliver a knock-out blow to London and that the RAF would not be able to prevent it. This was a mistaken assumption, but because the RAF Marshals wouldn't guarantee the air defence of Britain yet, they advised Chamberlain that Britain wasn't ready to fight, and that war in 1939 was militarily far preferable to war now, in 1938.
This was a prime reason Chamberlain appeased Hitler at Munich in September 1938 - his military chiefs had advised him to.
Quote:
Originally posted by redcoat:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing 
However if Germany had started building an extra 100+ U-boats instead of the Bismarck and Tirpitz, it would have told the British in the 1937-8 period that Germany was indeed looking to fight Britain.
This in my view, would have made Britain stand up to Hitler far sooner than it did, maybe as soon as the annexation of Austria, and almost certainly at Munich.
If the British had stood up to Hitler, the French would almost certainly have followed, and Hitler would have been either forced to fight a war which his army was unready for, or back down.
Also the British on seeing the U-boat build up would have increased the building of escort ships at the expense of their heavy units. So while the Germans would have more U-boats the Convoys would have been better protected.
|