Anyone see Clarkson and the PQ17 prog last night?
A question. Dudley Pound obviously mucked up telling the convoy to scatter, but once scattered could it have been reformed? One suspects that would have involved radio traffic saying "OK chaps, let's meet at point x." To which the reply would probably have been "Danke. Ve vill be there." (Sorry Mr BigBoss.)
Also, if the Tirpitz was such a threat why weren't there heavier units from the Home Fleet in support? I know some convoys were supported by battleships.
I would love to have seen Clarkson dumped in the Arctic waters. They'd have had three minutes to get him out, wouldn't they?
Reassembling the convoy would be a nightmare - even if you could rely on encrypted signals or signals not being intercepted the convoy would take hours, if not days, to collect together. First arrivals would need to remain in place for far too long, prey to u-boats and air attacks, even if the convoy hadn't broadcast it's position.
Why no heavier units? U-boats and aircraft, at a guess. Possibly also a belief that the Germans did not have enough fuel and escorts to send Tirpitz to sea.
Quote from: fsn on 03 January 2014, 08:27:27 AM
I would love to have seen Clarkson dumped in the Arctic waters. They'd have had three minutes to get him out, wouldn't they?
I would have sailed on at that point
Quote from: Ithoriel on 03 January 2014, 10:38:05 AM
Reassembling the convoy would be a nightmare - even if you could rely on encrypted signals or signals not being intercepted the convoy would take hours, if not days, to collect together. First arrivals would need to remain in place for far too long, prey to u-boats and air attacks, even if the convoy hadn't broadcast it's position.
Why no heavier units? U-boats and aircraft, at a guess. Possibly also a belief that the Germans did not have enough fuel and escorts to send Tirpitz to sea.
Much merit in this summary.
It is near impossible to regroup a convoy in the aftermath of an attack. Now you try after the code signal for "Tirpitz is coming, save yourselves" has been given.
While a number of convoys had long range protection by Battleships and aircraft carriers the majority was escorted by nothing more than corvettes, frigates and destroyers with an occasional (light) cruiser as a flagship. Tirpitz was a "fleet in being" to the extent that major attacks via air were conducted to remove this threat.
I was wondering about the Leo Gradwell group. I'd love to do a game with the three merchant ships andf trawler stuck in the ice fighting off surfaced U-boats and boarding parties using tank guns.
David Irving is fascinating on the Arctic convoys, as with much else. His history of PQ17 is available as a free d/load below.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/PQ17/
Be very careful with Irving - his politics do tend to flow into his history, and to put it politely he leans a bit to the right. Not a comment on that work.
IanS
Quote from: ianrs54 on 03 January 2014, 04:51:08 PM
Be very careful with Irving - his politics do tend to flow into his history, and to put it politely he leans a bit to the right. Not a comment on that work.
IanS
I don't know why you say that, don't most people refer to the judge as 'Mein Furher' when giving evidence in court? ;)
Well I dont hold him much regard as denied the holocaust ever took place
A number of the ships did join up into mini groups after scattering and these did much better than the single ships fighting off both air and submarine attacks.
One group of about 3 merchantmen and 2? corvettes scattered to the north and ended up hiding in the ice. They even found enough white paint to paint the southern sides of the ships to help with camouflage.
Another group formed from some of the ships that scattered east, including the 2 AA ships. Several hid in various coves on Novaya Zemlaya the large islands to the east of the Barents Seas, particularly the 'gap' between the two islands about the middle. They were gathered up and several days later they arrived safely in a mini-convoy having driven off air attacks.
British heavy ships were not permitted east of Bear Island due to the risk of air attack and also U-boats. The Royal Navy was very short of battleships at this time and those that were available were spread very thinly across the globe. The Italians had raided Alexandria damaging Queen Elizabeth and Valiant. Prince of Wales & Repulse had been lost off Malaya. Anson & Howe had not yet been commissioned and the old R class were not really up to much except convoy escort well away from trouble.
The thing that amazes me is how little help the Russians gave to the convoys. Almost no air cover, very limited raids on the German airfields, even making it very difficult for the British to base aircraft in northern Russia to provide the air support the Russians weren't providing...
Also Stalin insisted on the convoys even though it was much easier to deliver supplies via Iran...
My late departed neighbour was on the a northern Convoys and was disgusted to get into
Murmansk in spring 44 to find all the kit they had delivered n 43 still exactly where he left it.
He lost the tip of his forefinger in a breech closure incident and missed his ships last convoy and he was the only survivor!
He later served on minesweepers at DDay.
My grandfather was a merchant seaman. He was on a convoy and the ship in front of his was sunk. His ship moved up, and the one behind (i.e. where his ship had been) promptly went down.
He said it was at that point he began to take it personally.
Quote from: Fenton on 03 January 2014, 06:06:08 PM
Well I dont hold him much regard as denied the holocaust ever took place
He absolutely did not. Have you read Hitler's War?
2 years in an Austrian prison.
IanS
Quote from: Fenton on 03 January 2014, 06:06:08 PM
Well I dont hold him much regard as denied the holocaust ever took place
Quote from: ianrs54 on 07 January 2014, 04:50:08 PM
2 years in an Austrian prison.
Good!
Quote from: get2grips on 08 January 2014, 08:27:19 AM
Good!
Sigh. He was put in prison and charged with 'challenging the established history of the holocaust and Nazi Germany' and also with 'reactivation'. It is not possible to research WWII and publish anything of merit in either Germany or Austria because of these laws, they are fundamentally illiberal and date (in Austria at least) from the period of soviet occupation. You might be interested to know that any attempt to allocate blame for Katyn to anyone other than the Nazis was also a criminal offence until 1998. I shouldn't be surprised at the attitude of some of the posts above, as our country becomes more 'european' our liberties recede.
Before anyone replies to this, please state which of Irving's books you have actually read.
If Turkey joins the EU the European arrest warrant will permit the deportation, trial and imprisonment of anyone asserting the truth of the Armenian holocaust. Presumably that will meet with your approval also.
Irvine did not deny the holocaust but he stated that it was exaggerated, the gas chambers a hoax and that Hitler knew little about it.
I haven't read any of his books (nor do I wish to) but that isn't relevant because the charges related to lectures he gave.
I think the guy is just a bit of a plonker and egotistical.
Agreed though the laws are archaic and illiberal (you shouldn't be sent to prison for being an egotistical plonker).
Hmm..same crap another year?
Concerning the holocaust: Yes they/we DID kill that many. We are damn efficient in everything and do keep records.
Having said that I discussed these matters with a friend in another forum. He is in his 70ss now and emigrated as a young boy to Israel. Lost his parents in the Holocaust.
He says I should and as a matter of fact all germans be proud of our country and what we did OUTSIDE these 12 years. He says he certainly is.
The problem is that there are indeed people who use the "You Nazi" argument (a little excessive imho) to justify any kind of opinion upon Germany and Germans. I do hope at least some of you do not feel offnded by my mere existence but the sad truth is some people are (not with me personally).
There are a lot of ignorant bigots on this planet but I believe they can be found in every country, in some to a higher degree than others but stupidity and ignorance a the first globalised issues.
Well said sir.,
Don't end up falling out gents......please !
Cheers - Phil
Quote from: Matt of Munslow on 08 January 2014, 05:23:35 PM
Irvine did not deny the holocaust but he stated that it was exaggerated, the gas chambers a hoax and that Hitler knew little about it.
I haven't read any of his books (nor do I wish to) but that isn't relevant because the charges related to lectures he gave.
I think the guy is just a bit of a plonker and egotistical.
Agreed though the laws are archaic and illiberal (you shouldn't be sent to prison for being an egotistical plonker).
He said that one of the chambers at Auchwitz was a 1948 reconstruct, the Soviets denied it, the Poles subsequently acknowledged it, for this he was prosecuted in Munich. He never, ever denied the Einsatzgruppen shootings, read Hitler's War (excellent and highly critical of Hitler, odd for someone accused of being a Hitler groupie), he puts the numbers at 1.5m plus and he is merciless in his excoriation of these crimes, he also acknowledges that the Reinhardt camps were extermination camps. What he won't do is 'buy' the holocaust uncritically because he knows, any sane person knows, that it has become a game of political poker in which Israel dares anyone to call the facts. He was badly misled by the pseudo science of certain individuals re the chambers, a fault he has freely admitted, but he does continue to ask difficult questions and in some countries that is a crime. Thanks to his revelations in 'Churchill Vol II' we now know Churchill wanted De Gaulle assassinated and was only prevented by Eden and the cabinet, also that Eden arranged the assassination of Admiral Darlan in Casablanca in 1943. What should the term be for these revelations? Life?
Now now my friends.
Whereas I DO criticise Israel when applicable I do not make the assumption all israelis are Jews. There is quite a number of Muslims and Christian believers in that country.
Mentioning the darker side of Churchill has merit and he should be seen in his entirety (like everyone else).
Hitler was certainly evil and the good he did (agricultural research, economic policy -profitting from Ebert as well) must be seen in connection with his intention to
-gain Lebensraum
-make Germany independent of world markets
-abolish democracy in favour of a elite-totalitarian system
-remove any power from religious groups
-make Germany the world superpower
Now we argue Churchill was the good guy (because he won?) but I also know he was very fond of concentration camps (Boer War) and had every intention to "nervegas the bastards" who were uprising against British rule in the middle east. Nervegas in particular seems to be one of his obsessions (Sealion, Franco-Spanish wars in Africa).
But as much as I despise him (2014) for this (1900 - 1930s) I do acknowledge that he was able to learn from his mistakes. Read about operation Unthinkable. When told it was impossible to face the Red Army in the field with British/American/French forces he immediately asked what would happen if he re-armed the Germans. If nothing else he was pragmatic, a whitty verbal artist and had some taste (Whiskey, Cigars..)
Real Life is more complex and the German record keeping is pretty accurate on the matter of the Holocaust. As I said, organisational efficiency put into a very bad cause.
Quote from: cameronian on 08 January 2014, 09:32:56 PM
He said that one of the chambers at Auchwitz was a 1948 reconstruct, the Soviets denied it, the Poles subsequently acknowledged it, for this he was prosecuted in Munich. He never, ever denied the Einsatzgruppen shootings, read Hitler's War (excellent and highly critical of Hitler, odd for someone accused of being a Hitler groupie), he puts the numbers at 1.5m plus and he is merciless in his excoriation of these crimes, he also acknowledges that the Reinhardt camps were extermination camps. What he won't do is 'buy' the holocaust uncritically because he knows, any sane person knows, that it has become a game of political poker in which Israel dares anyone to call the facts. He was badly misled by the pseudo science of certain individuals re the chambers, a fault he has freely admitted, but he does continue to ask difficult questions and in some countries that is a crime. Thanks to his revelations in 'Churchill Vol II' we now know Churchill wanted De Gaulle assassinated and was only prevented by Eden and the cabinet, also that Eden arranged the assassination of Admiral Darlan in Casablanca in 1943. What should the term be for these revelations? Life?
The Guardian does seem to like him much! My bolding and italics
February 2006: The British revisionist historian and Nazi apologist David Irving was today sentenced to three years in prison after he admitted denying the Holocaust.
An eight-member jury at a court in Vienna convicted Irving, 68, a few hours after it began its deliberations on the first day of his trial.
Irving had pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust in two speeches on a visit to Austria in 1989, but said at the trial that he had later changed his views.
The speeches included a call for an end to the "gas chambers fairy tale", and claims that Adolf Hitler had helped Europe's Jews and that the Holocaust was a myth.
The GuardianJudge Charles Grey in 2000 didn't seem to be overly friendly with him either!
'Excerpts from High Court Judge Charles Gray's ruling in the David Irving libel suit
"It is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.
It appears to me to be incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier. Not only has he denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and asserted that no Jew was gassed there, he has done so on frequent occasions and sometimes in the most offensive terms. By way of examples, I cite his story of the Jew climbing into a mobile telephone box-cum-gas chamber; his claim that more people died in the back of Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz; his dismissal of the eyewitnesses en masse as liars or suffering from a mental problem ... I reject as being untrue the claim made by Irving in his evidence that in his denial of the existence of any gas chambers at Auschwitz, he was referring solely to the gas chamber constructed by the Poles after the war for the benefit of visitors to the site or, as Irving put it, as a 'tourist attraction.'
Having grossly underestimated the number who lost their lives in the camps, Irving is prone to claim that a greater number than that were killed in Allied bombing raids on Dresden and elsewhere. He has, moreover, repeatedly claimed that the British Psychological War Executive ingeniously discovered the lies that the Nazis were killing Jews in gas chambers in order to use it as propaganda.
Irving is anti-Semitic. His words are directed against Jews, either individually or collectively, in the sense that they are by turn hostile, critical, offensive and derisory in their references to Semitic people, their characteristics and appearances ... Irving has made claims that the Jews deserve to be disliked; that they brought the Holocaust on themselves. He speaks regularly at political or quasi-political meetings in Germany, the United States, Canada and the New World. The content of his speeches and interviews often displays a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias. He makes surprising and often unfounded assertions about the Nazi regime which tend to exonerate the Nazis for the appalling atrocities which they inflicted on the Jews. He is content to mix with neo-facists and appears to share many of their racist and anti-Semitic prejudices.
The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."
Yes the Russian supply convoys were hell. I'm Hull born an bred , as a family we lost my grandfather (chief engineer) atlantic star,- torpedoed, Uncle Bob engineer (george cross- for rescueing crew by swiming under burning fuel oil, uncle "chucker" radio operator atlantic star for manning a lewis gun under air attack till his tanker sank beneath him, Fred great uncle, engineer,in his 60s had 3 ships torpedoed out from under him atlantic star ww1 vet sgt major miitary cross. 96 when he went,and many others who served.Yes it was hell.