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Actually in the regards to fight number claims the RAF were very much guilty of exponentially over inflating victory kills themselves, many pilots claimed shooting down aircraft but could not substantiate if they crashed, but were credited with kills anyway, many of the so called kills managed to limp home, the higher kill claims were of propaganda value.
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The RAF claimed about 2400 German aircraft, actual German losses on operations were about 1,800. Not all those were actually shot down by the RAF, of course, but those are claims vs operational losses.
I don't have full Luftwaffe claims, but the Jagdwaffe alone claimed 2000 single engined fighters, the RAF lost just under 1,000 on operations.
That means total RAF claims were about 1.3 - 1.4 German operational losses, Jagdwaffe claims were about 2 times RAF losses to all causes. Throw in the German bomber claims and you have Luftwaffe claims about 3 times RAF losses.
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If the British had lost the Med then the "around the Cape" route is far more dangerous to shipping than you realise, the seas of South Africa are dangerous and unpredictable, plus the convoys would have to run the entire west African coast from constant harrasment from U-Boats that could be deployed along that route, and whats more it add valuable time for the convoys to get to Britain.
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I don't think you understand. As soon as Italy entered the war in 1940, all traffic went around the cape anyway. The only exception were convoys headed for Malta, and occasional warship transits.
The Med was effectively closed from 1940 until late 1943 or 1944.
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Britain build more ships, please help me to understand this, for more merchant ships to be built, some RN naval programs would have to curtailed or cancelled, pray tell which RN ships would suffer to bolster the Merchantile Marine.
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No, I'm pointing out what actually happened. British merchant tonnage went up, because more ships were acquired for the British merchant fleet.
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I am not sure how much an WWII vintage oil carrier carries in weight in oil but i bet if several hundred are sunk through the early phase of the war that would put severe pressure on Britain available fuel stocks.
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What I gave were the historic figures, what actually happened in the war.
Certainly you can make a case the Germans could, for example, put more resources in to U boats, and sink more ships. But the question then becomes what areas the Germans sacrifice to achieve this, and what the British counter is. None of that seems to have been done on this thread.
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Actually, the loss of Alexandria and possibly the loss of Massawa in its wake (eg., the Axis retakes Italian Ethopia) takes away the two major ports of operation the British have in Eastern Africa. The loss of these two along with their use by the Axis as operating bases for U-boats into the Indian Ocean would represent a huge strain on Commonwealth escorting resources. Trade around the Horn would be far more difficult now running a several thousand mile long gauntlet of U-boat "infested" waters.
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Well, this is where I think we are stretching reality too far.
Let's just magic away the German supply problems in North Africa, and assume the Germans take the Med. How does that give them Ethiopia?
Massawa is about 1200 miles from Alexandria. If the Germans have Egypt, they then have to push a thousand miles down the coast, even assuming Suez is left intact. As the British were bringing their troops around the cape, this reduces British supply lines by a thousand miles, and adds a thousand on to the German lines.
I just can't see the Germans maintaining any capability that far south. The lesson of WW2 is that German logistics weren't very good. In the real world, the British sent their supplies all the way around Africa, the Germans sent theirs across the Med, and the British still won the supply battle.
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What I was suggesting wasn't so much a high intensity Blitz as just a sustained campaign with possibly several raids of maybe just 20 to 50 aircraft per night with nightfighter escorts
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The Luftwaffe did many smaller raids like this, along with much larger ones, so that's a reduction in Luftwaffe effort. The night fighters would make no real difference, German bomber losses were not high until right at the end of the campaign, when RAF radar equipped night fighters began to make a difference. German night fighters had no radar at the time, so weren't going to be very effective escorts at night.
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along with daylight fighter bomber raids, the occasional anti-shipping strike, etc.
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Which is what they did.
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This would make it hard for the British to withdraw RAF units to other theaters while the Germans have sufficent forces uncommitted to action over the UK to operate else where.
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The RAF were sending fighter reinforcements to North Africa in August and September 1940. Nothing the Luftwaffe could do after that was going to prevent the RAF buildup.
In terms of fighter production, Britain produced about 470 - 490 fighters a month during the height of the BoB, and still had enough to send some to North Africa. In the late winter and early spring of 1941, they were producing 530 - 600 a month. In terms of pilots, Fighter Command exceeded authorised pilot strength in late October, early November 1940. The numbers of pilots being trained was actually accelerating, for example the Commonwealth air training programme turned out less than 1,000 pilots in 1940, but about 9,000 in 1941.
Even if the Germans had committed their entire air force, as they did in the BoB, the RAF had an excess of pilots and aircraft going in to 1941.
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True enough. But, the Allies historically were spending roughly ten times the money Germany was on the U-boat war.
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I don't think so. U boats were not exactly cheap, the Germans built about 1,100 of them during the war.
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But, if the Germans are more scruplious about not attacking US and neutral shipping outside declaired war zones then the US is given little reason to engage in a European war. Where ever the materials are coming from to Britain they go by sea. The Germans need only worry about tonnage sunk not where it is or what it is carrying. Eventually, this will hurt Britain's ability to pursue the war.
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If you look at the historical performance you see just how long a campaign this would have been for Germany.
The British merchant fleet amounted to 20,854,000 tons at the end of 1940. At the end of 1941 it was 20,693,000 tons.
That's a reduction of just 161,000 tons, 0.77%, in a year of operations.
It's going to take the Germans a long time to win at that rate. And if the Germans are being more careful about the ships they sink, then losses would actually go down.
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It would be difficult for US politicians to justify giving Britain war material to fight Germany while the US was at war with Japan. This could easily be political suicide in the US.
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I suspect that both countries being allies against Japan would mean closer links in 1942 than 1941, and the US passed Lend Lease in 1941. The US was also producing far more equipment than could reasonably be deployed in the Pacific.
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You would have definitely seen a drop in US naval strenght in the Atlantic far greater than was historically done once it became clear Germany was not going to go to war with the US.
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Yes but if the US was not at war with Germany then no happy time in 1942.