News Britain to build 2 new aircraft carriers

[Athrun]

I would go as far as to say that Germany would have won if they had not gone for Russia, they had both superior troops and tanks - the only area where the US/UK were better was in the air

Britain had a more superior navy than germany in both WW1 + 2, and dont forget the British navy also fought the italian navy with success in the med..
yes german uboats were a pain, but britain also had subs and iirc the first ever sub vs sub victory was from a british sub vs a german uboat.

I doubt very much that germany would have "won" even if they didnt go for russia.. Britain played smart with turtle tactics to defend itself from invasion by the RAF + navy, while at the same time concentrating on long ranged attacks by air and continuing superiority at sea, it would have been retarded to push money into making a ground force that could compete with germanys strong ground army.

hitler stopped his plans for the invasion of britain aka "operation sea lion" after the battle of britain, granted a substantial amount of this success is attributed to Britian inventing a network of radar systems around the southern coast of Britian, german intelligence had no idea we even had this at the time.. meaning we could always know where and when german aircraft would be.
With no way for germany to invade Britain how could we "lose" ? Britain had a long term strategy based on defence first, the "winner" would have been the first country to develope a working nuke..

As for your comment about germany out trooping us "easily" in a modern war hmm, it would be far from "easy"
germany have an estimated 280k professional soldiers, britain has 200k atm.
Britain still has a larger air force than germany, and still has a far superior navy.
and ground forces? Britain uses the challenger2 tank which is a superior tank to the leopard2, it is has much better armour (uses advanced chobham armour while american abrahms tanks use the earlier chobham), C2 has a far longer killing range than L2 (and any other tank for that matter), the C2 still holds the record for the furthest tank vs tank kill.
L2 is smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper to produce and maintain and more fuel efficient, it would be the tank i would purchase if i was in a position to do so for my country because of this, but i know for sure which tank i would rather be inside in combat
not a single challenger2 has been destroyed by enemy fire to date, despite 1 being hit in afghanistan by 20+ rpg and a Milan anti tank missile.. it was able to withdraw with only its targetting system damaged.
Ofc we could argue for hours regarding german vs british ground forces, who could "out troop" who, who has the better quality, who has the quantity, SAS/SBS etc, britains apache helis.. but the bottom line is Britain is 1 of only 5 nuclear powers in the world

 

[old.Tohtori]

Have to say though, i wonder if even Hitler would've used a nuke.

Sure the US used a couple, but they've always been a bit of "dick waving lunatics" when it comes to war.

 

[Golena]

Have to say though, i wonder if even Hitler would've used a nuke.

Sure the US used a couple, but they've always been a bit of "dick waving lunatics" when it comes to war.

I doubt anyone would during war time worry about using a nuke assuming (and it's a very important assumption) they are the only country with them.

The reason that nukes are unlikely to ever be used again is because in any future superpower wars, both sides have enough to completely destroy the enemy before the first nuke actually explodes.
There's a simple rule in war that if the enemy can destroy you entirely by pressing a single button, you don't give him no option but to press the button. If he doesn't have that button to press, you do what the fuck you like!

The reason no-one is prepared to use them against countries without nukes at the moment, is because it would upset countries that do have them enough that it would do more harm than good.

 

[Mabs]

saw this, and i thought of you (lot)

 

[Helme]

Yeah the US navy is practically unbeatable for anyone currently.

 

[Cylian]

I doubt very much that germany would have "won" even if they didnt go for russia.. Britain played smart with turtle tactics to defend itself from invasion by the RAF + navy, while at the same time concentrating on long ranged attacks by air and continuing superiority at sea, it would have been retarded to push money into making a ground force that could compete with germanys strong ground army.

If Russia had stayed out of WW2, not being attacked and not attacking, there'd be maybe four countries left. England, Swiss, Russia and a pretty big one called Germany. England wouldn't have 'lost' the war, everyone else would've though.

And for loosing two World Wars, first one was a 'loose' on paper, no enemy forces were inside the borders of germany when the war ended.

For loosing the 2nd, military loose oh yes! But with pretty much everything destroyed (something you should think about when talking about war), the rebuilding had this side effect that all the factories were 'high' tech at the time. Leaving Germany to become one of the leading industrial powers.
Probably one of the reasons why the british are still bitter. Winning the war and loosing in the time after.

And no, germany won't go to war in the next few decades. Supporting allies, yes, police things, yes, but no active fighting force.

 

[Hawkwind]

and just to win a few votes and placate the shipyards we are building them here, resulting in smaller, gas powered carriers when for the same price we could have gone for already existing technology giving a nuclear powered carrier with twice the plane capacity and catapult launcher for them.

Stupid.

We don't need mile long US Nuclear types. We just need something the latest generation of figher/interceptors/bombers can take off from. The old carriers we have can only be used for Harriers and even the last varients delivered to the RN, the GR9's are 20 years behind the curve. The navy needs EFA/F22/YF23 type aircraft if it is to be of any use in future conflicts.

 

[kiliarien]

The British are going for concentrated firepower, HMS Daring (and it's sister ships coming) are scary pieces of kit:

HMS Daring, the first of a planned class of eight Type 45 destroyers

 

[Lethul]

come to think of it our airforce is probably the only war ready part of our military, and we're flying JAS planes -.-

Anything wrong with JAS? oO

 

[andeh]

If Russia had stayed out of WW2, not being attacked and not attacking, there'd be maybe four countries left. England, Swiss, Russia and a pretty big one called Germany. England wouldn't have 'lost' the war, everyone else would've though.

Britain had a more superior navy than germany in both WW1 + 2, and dont forget the British navy also fought the italian navy with success in the med..
yes german uboats were a pain, but britain also had subs and iirc the first ever sub vs sub victory was from a british sub vs a german uboat.

I doubt very much that germany would have "won" even if they didnt go for russia.. Britain played smart with turtle tactics to defend itself from invasion by the RAF + navy, while at the same time concentrating on long ranged attacks by air and continuing superiority at sea, it would have been retarded to push money into making a ground force that could compete with germanys strong ground army.

hitler stopped his plans for the invasion of britain aka "operation sea lion" after the battle of britain, granted a substantial amount of this success is attributed to Britian inventing a network of radar systems around the southern coast of Britian, german intelligence had no idea we even had this at the time.. meaning we could always know where and when german aircraft would be.
With no way for germany to invade Britain how could we "lose" ? Britain had a long term strategy based on defence first, the "winner" would have been the first country to develope a working nuke..

It is pointless to discuss what might have happened had Hitler not invaded Russia since that was his main aim (iirc). Russia formed a large part of his lebensraum policy, not to mention the fact that it was oil rich at that point. When Britain, along with France and a couple of other countries declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, they were in no position to actually wage war against Hitler. Say Russia had stayed out of the war though, Hitler would then be fighting a war against western europe basically, considering Britain was very close to defeat when Germany was fighting a war on 2 fronts (Only the change of policy from bombing air fields to major cities allowed the RAF to recover sufficiently to slowly turn the tide), I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Britain may well have fallen without intervention from the USA in such a scenario.

Britain did not play it smart with tactics, they took the only course of action that was available considering their military strength at that point. It's stupid to say we 'won' ww2 by clever use of tactics when the only thing that really stopped us falling as easily as France was the fact we are an island nation. You then ask how Britain could have lost, well it helps if you actually know anything about a subject before commenting on it. Britain was in actual fact very close to 'defeat' at points during ww2, both to air raids on air fields which was crippling the RAF and through uboat attacks on transatlantic shipping. Hitler changed his policy from bombing air fields to bombing cities to break the morale of the populace, he didn't realise just how fragile the RAF was when he made this change (against the advice of his high command afaik). Just to clarify, no RAF = Germany almost free to send barges across from France to initiate an invasion. The radar sites did not go unnoticed either, Germany was not ignorant to their existance and they were bombed on atleast one occasion, they however did underestimate/not know the significance of said sites and did not follow this up.

And yes Germany benefitted a great deal from the rebuilding after ww2, but this was only because the USSR were converting most of eastern Europe to the communist cause and west Germany was seen as an ideal oppertunity to show democracy as the superior political system. So as eastern Germany went neglected as part of the communist system, West Germany enjoyed heavy investment from the US to demonstrate this point. It basically enjoyed such levels of investment purely because it was the 'last line' against the spread of communism in post war europe, not because everything was destroyed and needed rebuilding.

 

[Athrun]

Britain was very close to defeat when Germany was fighting a war on 2 fronts (Only the change of policy from bombing air fields to major cities allowed the RAF to recover sufficiently to slowly turn the tide), I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Britain may well have fallen without intervention from the USA in such a scenario.

Britain still had 650-700 operational fighter aircraft, and many operational fighter bases at the end of the battle of britain when germany decided to switch to bombing cities, and Britain at the time was producing 400+ fighter planes a month.

Britain did not play it smart with tactics, they took the only course of action that was available considering their military strength at that point. It's stupid to say we 'won' ww2 by clever use of tactics when the only thing that really stopped us falling as easily as France was the fact we are an island nation.

Well ofc they 'did' play it smart with tactics to pump available funds into keeping the strongest navy in europe at the time, whilst keeping a very strong air force (that was aided by people from many other countries)
There were ofc other options, we could have built a strong army and aided france better, we chose not to.
Its quite retarded to say "the only thing that stopped us falling was the fact we are an island nation" when indeed it was a combination of having europes strongest navy, a very strong air force and being an island nation

You then ask how Britain could have lost, well it helps if you actually know anything about a subject before commenting on it. Britain was in actual fact very close to 'defeat' at points during ww2, both to air raids on air fields which was crippling the RAF and through uboat attacks on transatlantic shipping.

British air fields were hit hard during the battle of britain granted, but as i said already Britain still had nearly 700 operational fighter aircraft ready to respond after the Battle of britain, with British factories at that time able to produce 400+ fighter aircraft a month, so "crippling" the RAF is quite an exageration.
And uboats did have a great impact on shipping at the start of ww2 when america was supplying britain, but this was due alot to americas policy to let merchant vessails sail to britain without escorts, and sailing from the coast of america where there was no blackout at night on the coast.. the merchant ships were easy pickings.
As ww2 progressed and american / royal navy anti submarine escort ships became more efficient + numerous the uboat threat was greatly reduced.

Hitler changed his policy from bombing air fields to bombing cities to break the morale of the populace, he didn't realise just how fragile the RAF was when he made this change

Poor german intelligence estimated the number of RAF fighter planes we had at the start and end of the battle of britain was actually around half of what Britain actually had.
British RAF had roughly a 2-1 possitive kill ratio over germany during the battle of britain, germany switched to mainly night time raids after the battle of britain as they knew they could just not win a war of attrition in the air during day time.

Just to clarify, no RAF = Germany almost free to send barges across from France to initiate an invasion.

Again quite the opposite actually, after ww2 ended, numerous war game simulations were carried out involving commanders from both sides to see what would have happened if indeed the RAF had been defeated in the battle of britain and guess what? every time the northern royal navy fleet were able to cause massive casualties to the german troops packed into landing craft, some british ships would ofc have been lost to german fighters + subs, and it was not impossible for germany to land 'some' troops onto mainland england, but in every simulation the invasion was effectivly stopped, it would have been germanys stalingrad in england

The radar sites did not go unnoticed either, Germany was not ignorant to their existance and they were bombed on atleast one occasion, they however did underestimate/not know the significance of said sites and did not follow this up.

Understand that i was talking about the germans ignorance of the radar stations in england at the battle of britian, again poor intelligence from germany stated "britain has no working radar system"
ofc germany knew of the sites as they were photographed by recon planes numerous times, but german intelligence marked them as "no significant military threat" how wrong could they be?

And yes Germany benefitted a great deal from the rebuilding after ww2, but this was only because the USSR were converting most of eastern Europe to the communist cause and west Germany was seen as an ideal oppertunity to show democracy as the superior political system. So as eastern Germany went neglected as part of the communist system, West Germany enjoyed heavy investment from the US to demonstrate this point. It basically enjoyed such levels of investment purely because it was the 'last line' against the spread of communism in post war europe, not because everything was destroyed and needed rebuilding.

you are right about this at least

 

[Athrun]

it helps if you actually know anything about a subject before commenting on it.

no u

 

[cHodAX]

saw this, and i thought of you (lot)

Be interesting to see where the new carriers fit in, according to reports they are 3 times the size of the current British carriers which would make our new ones super carriers that match the largest America has to offer.

 

[cHodAX]

The British are going for concentrated firepower, HMS Daring (and it's sister ships coming) are scary pieces of kit:

HMS Daring, the first of a planned class of eight Type 45 destroyers

Yep, the Type 45 will be a devastating anti-air platform. Something we very much needed.

 

[soze]

If Germany created a effective blockade England would have been starved out of the war much the same as the way the yanks did it too Japan. The A Bomb was needed though as the population of Japan had been told the fight to the death on the streets as Allieds were rapist killing machines. So it left a blockade till they all starved to death fighting and killing the whole population or the A Bomb. Plus Japan were working on some really nast bio weapons. The videos of them being tested on random people from the street is horrible.

False intelligence and great spys won us the war having hitler believe if he landed in England he would not meet Dads Army but a million traind soilders. And then the D Day landing telling him we are landing one place then another so he has to split his forces. The Modern Brittian Show had a great bit about Bletchly Park