Luftwaffe lost

[Andreas]

For those seriously inclined in learning about the Luftwaffe's involvement in the war in the Atlantic (or non-involvement), the very best work on the subject is:

NEITZEL, Sönke. Der Einsatz der deutschen Luftwaffe über dem Atlantik und der Nordsee 1939-1945 (Bonn, 1995).

The title is an award-winning Ph.D. dissertation that was then published as a book. If you can read German, it's a far better choice that the Isby title, which is a reprint of some FMS studies written from memory by former German officers in 1946-48. Regretably, the gentlemen get many of their dates and facts wrong and omit a great deal.

If the thread's participants (moderators excluded) will digest these two works, they will see just how correct WalterS has been in his postings.

Thanks for the tip Larry, I look forward to reading it (despite being a moderator).

All the best

Andreas

[Larry D.]

Andreas wrote -

Thanks for the tip Larry, I look forward to reading it (despite being a moderator).

My apologies. We humble peons who are permitted to dwell here must do so on the assumption that the esteemed moderators know all. To assume otherwise is to invite disaster.

--Larry

[Huck]

Now, back to the Luftwaffe's failures.

Huck's post:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 642#738642

is an interesting study in blame shifting. He doesn't deny the Luftwaffe's many failures, he merely says it was somebody else's fault.

For which I outlined the reasons, you are free to argue against them.

My previous post:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 314#736314

discussed the failure of the Luftwaffe to accomplish a number of specific strategic missions. Huck's post does not refute any of the points I made.

It happened because I lacked the time. I read your post and I'll give an answer.

I wrote:

The Luftwaffe failed to provide long range maritime support to the U Boat war.

Huck wrote:

* Failure to assist KM in Battle for Atlantic cannot be attributed to Luftwaffe either. Luftwaffe's high officials lack of enthusiasm for this campaign was caused by the same scarcity of resources.

He goes on in the same paragraph to state that 1000 missile equipped He-177 and Do-217 aircraft "would have been able to do much more than submarines did in late war years, if not completely stop the deliveries on sea surface. " Huck offers no sources for this claim and concludes the paragraph by blaming the German Navy:

The reasoning behind this was given a couple of months ago. I guess you missed so I will repeat it.

When given the chance to actually be involved in battles over Atlantic, Luftwaffe units did it with amazing success. After an initial built up in 1940, when they increased the number of available aircraft for antishipping operations to 150, they sunk 78,517 tons in Jan 1941 (compared with U-boats which sunk in the same month 128,782 tons). Next month the same units sunk another 89,305 tons. While U-boat victories ramped up significantly in the following months (there weren't many ships crossing the Atlantic during winter), the efforts spent were much bigger. It was the success that cut down the operation for the rest of the year, Luftwaffe officials feared the creation of naval aviation subordinated to KM instead of LW. In fact Luftwaffe was not interested at all in a naval aviation, because KM was not willing to share its resources for it (unless it was subordinated to KM). This kind of interservice rivalry happens everywhere when resources are scarce. In Germany this rivalry was acute, then, even ship serving seaplanes were Luftwaffe's planes.

Bottom line is Luftwaffe planes could and did inflict similar monthly losses with those inflicted by U-boats, when they tried it. They did that in early 1941, they did that in 1942 when they attacked PQ 16 and 17 convoys. They did that in 1943 when they switched to guided missiles (KG 100 alone claimed 291,000 tons in less than 500 sorties! 319 guided bombs droped, 215 functioned correctly, half of which hit the target!). 500 sorties per month was less than the usual figure for a KG, however KG 100 did that in half a year, clearly reflecting the neglect of antishipping operations. If just one bomber wing could do the same work with all U-boat force during its happy years, makes one wonder what would have happened if the antishipping operations would have received the required priority.

So why it did not happen? Of course, how could someone convince KM to accept that Luftwaffe could do its job better, that it has to split half of its resources (assigned for operations in Atlantic) for the creation of a real antishipping bomber force and that it has to invest the rest on future Type XXI sub operations?

Again, no sourcing for the statement that the Navy would have had to "split half of its resources" to develop maritime patrol aircraft.

Luftwaffe did not need additional resources to develop the aircraft, they were already developed and acquired. They needed additional resources to operate them. But Luftwaffe was not keen in operating them for antishipping missions anyway (for reasons given above).

Also, this statement flatly contradicts Admiral Dönitz's memoirs (which I previously quoted) wherein he states that he was literally begging the Luftwaffe for more support in the Atlantic.

How was supposed begging be helpful in this situation?

Nowhere does the Admiral say that he was faced with this trade-off in resources, and that he resisted development of Luftwaffe maritime support aircraft.

Nor he had to explictly say it, Germany's situation was not exactly good (read desperate) in terms of resources for continuing the war - a very important one was mentioned in this thread: fuel.
Dönitz himself armed his own U-boat force by doing what? cutting surface fleet share. There was no other way in Germany at that time, they could not make something out of nothing, in order to create an antishipping bomber force resources had to be cut from elsewhere. Luftwaffe was not willing to take from its own resources to do navy's job, as simple as that.

In fact, Dönitz lays the problem of insufficient maritime support aircraft squarely at the feet of Göring and the Luftwaffe:

For these reasons [command and control, recon, etc] the air war over the sea together with operations on and under the sea, should form one entity under the command of the navy. From the points of view of organization and of training, the various arms of the service which carry out all these operations properly form part of the navy and should jointly be subordinated to it.

Thank you for this quote. It nicely reveals the battle for the subordination of naval aviation, that hampered its creation. Of course, Luftwaffe had a different view than KM.

In opposition to this point of view stood General Goering who, from the time when a start was made in 1933 with the raising of a new German Air Force, adopted the attitude 'Everything that flies belongs to me!' From 1933 right up to 1939 Grand Admiral Raeder did his utmost in long and stubborn discussion to persuade the Government of the need for an independent naval air service. All his efforts were in vain.

Dönitz, "Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days," p. 132 (emphasis added)

This is nothing new. Immediately after ww2, the newly created USAF lobbied to dismantle the naval aviation altogether. Later they had a serious dispute with the US Army for whom should keep the ballistic missiles. Closer to our days, USAF was "perplexed" when found that US Army intended to mount bombs on OV-1, the STOL observation plane. After this incident it was decided that Army can acquire for combat purposes at most helicopters.'Everything that flies belongs to me!' is the norm not the exception within all airforces.

Here is what Admiral Dönitz says about Huck's beloved He-177:

How interested would you be to read Luftwaffe's officers opinion on U-boat combat performance? Me, not at all.
And in general, you won't build a credible case with quotes. If you want to discuss He-177 be prepared with operational statistics.

The design of the four engined bomber HE177, ordered in 1938, was complicated by the demand that the aircraft should also be capable of acting as a divebomber. As a result the machine was a failure. It was only completed after the declaration of war, failed to overcome its teething troubles and was consequently scrapped.

ibid, p. 138 (emphasis added)

So much for Huck's thesis that this aircraft could somehow have smashed Allied convoys.

This is good overview of all the nonsense written about He-177. It seems that Admiral Dönitz does not know that instead of being scrapped, He-177 was being produced months after it left service (out of service in early summer of 1944, being produced until late october 1944). When He-177 went out of production, no other major production (more than 500 built) German bomber was in production any longer (you are obviously unaware of this) - only Junkers bombers were being produced at very low pace, as Junkers factory was state owned and heavily backed by RLM. Far from being scrapped, planners kept He-177 in production after it went out of service, in the hope of future opportunities of employment. This clearly shows He-177 importance and potential.

The failure of the Luftwaffe to provide adequate support for the U-Boat war lies with the Luftwaffe and the senior Nazi leadership which failed to grasp the strategic importance of maritime support and was reluctant to relinquish control of any of its resources.

So, you wrote this whole post only to agree in the end with me?? Luftwaffe officials may have failed to understand the importance of an antishipping campaign (importance that you are overstating) but they were not the ones to decide. Only political leaders could decide the course of war. Luftwaffe took the tasks and did its best to accomplish them.

[Huck]

The topic of this thread is why the Luftwaffe lost. As pointed out earlier, the Luftwaffe lacked strategic vision. This was the number one reason why the Luftwaffe, for all its tactical successes, was, on balance, a miserable failure.

For me it is Luftwaffe's tactical failures during 1944 that played major role in Germany's final defeat. But they were caused mostly by the insane decision of taking Luftwaffe of the front line to defend the German cities. This left the ground troops without airforce capability of carrying daily missions behind the front line, not mentioning without air cover. This seems to be the weight that tipped the balance - the very well prepared Soviet offensive that started in early 1943 was stopped, but Wehrmacht could not do the same with the 1944 offensive (true, this time on two fronts simultaneously) that literally colapsed the front. Once the mid 1944 offensive succeded, everything crumbled like the proverbial domino stones (Romania switched sides and so on).

I discussed already about Luftwaffe's strategic bombing campaign. It was a failure, like everybody else's during ww2. Luftwaffe planned a second attempt for a bombing campaign, this time using precision bombing. This might have been much more cost effective, though it is impossible to judge its chances of success (already discussed in this thread).

The Luftwaffe failed, during the Battle of Britain, to achieve air superiority over the planned invasion areas.

This is pure fiction. There was no fight to achieve air superiority over invasion areas during BoB, for one obvious reason - there were no planned invasion areas. In fact there was no invasion planned to take place in 1940, this is well documented. Heer officials made it clear to Hitler that after the campaigns throughout Europe, that Heer did in early 1940, there was no way to try an invasion of British isles. Luftwaffe action was just Hitler's attempt to negotiate hard with the British for the peace. When it was obvious that Churchill won't sign anything, they switched to low pace night bombing (as reprisals).

I'm sorry to say this so bluntly but there was no British victory against Luftwaffe during BoB, as Luftwaffe carried out bombing missions for no military purpose (that supposedly failed) but only to bring the British politicians to peace negotiations, much the way Americans tried with North Vietnamese. While North Vietnamese proved to be more willing to carry out negotiations (much due to the fact that North Vietnamese had little defense against air strikes, whereas between German and British forces there was no such disparity), the end result was the same, a failure. So the British victory was against Hitler policy not against Luftwaffe's campaign, Luftwaffe carried out its task as long it was asked to do it.

The Luftwaffe failed to provide long range maritime support to the U Boat war.

They didn't for reasons given in the previous post.

The Luftwaffe failed to eliminate Malta as a British base.

The Luftwaffe failed to supply 6th Army at Stalingrad.

Even if Luftwaffe would have succeded in Malta, could the Italian navy protect the isle from the British? I doubt it. Luftwaffe tried to eliminate Malta, the isle might have been useful for a while, but I think they shouldn't have tried in the first place.

As for Stalingrad, as much or little as they did, nobody would have been able to do more in those weather conditions.

The Luftwaffe failed to develop any long range strategic bombing capability.

False, already discussed.

The Luftwaffe failed to prevent RAF night bombing raids.

The Luftwaffe failed to prevent daylight USAAF bombings.

They did stop them temporarily, but the Allies were willing to make enormous sacrifices to keep this campaign going. Luftwaffe won and lost battles in this home defense campaign, but the bottom line is that both Allied strategic campaign and Luftwaffe's home defense campaign costed insanely much, especially when compared with results. If they had realloted part of those expenses for tactical missions they could have affected the war course significantly. Though Allies (beside Soviets) were not really prepared for tactical missions, they had no dedicated attack planes (other than those carrier based).

The Luftwaffe failed to interdict the D-Day landings.

The Luftwaffe failed to support German troop movements in France during the Normandy battles.

Luftwaffe also failed to stop the Soviet advance in mid 1944. I see that you have a very strong bias towards the American and British efforts. Without the Soviets keeping the bulk (including the best) of the German troops on Eastern Front, Allied invasion in France would have never happen.

The reason for these failures was the useless home defense campaign, a campaign that eated Luftwaffe resources on all fronts for no military gain (point already discussed).

In short, the Luftwaffe failed in every important strategic mission.

Yes it did, but the most important strategic failures were caused by problems outside Luftwaffe's control, for reasons mentioned.

[Huck]

This is the amazingly stimulating effect of Allied strategic bombing:

In Germany

Airplane production:
1943 24.807
1944 39.807

Submarines
1943 270
1944 387

Tanks
1943 5663
1944 7975

Overall armored vehicles (including tanks)
1943 24,840
1944 32,794

Artillery
1943 27.000
1944 41.000

Automatic weapons
1943 435.000
1944 787.000

Munitions (tons)
1943 2.558.000
1944 3.350.000

Basically every single weapon requested on the front had an increase in production in 1944.

Perhaps if the Allied bombing campaign had started earlier, Germany would have produced enough supplies to win the war :roll:

Meaningless - you need to construct the counterfactual of what production would have been without the bombing campaign to analyse its effectiveness. You are also ignoring the effect on fuel production and transport supply, both of which were affected quite seriously.

This is hilarious.
So dear Andreas, we need to produce counterfactual figures to prove wrong what actually happened?!! long live counterfactual history, screw the facts, right?
I think Markus should immediately nominate you as moderator for the "What if" section, we found a man with love for the subject

Increased maritime bombing - regarding diversion of KM personnel into refineries - AIUI the problem was not a lack of refined products, it was a lack of crude to refine.

Synthetic oil was produced from coal. Again just man were needed to increase production.

You also have not addressed how these He-177 would have been protected against shore-based fighters

Why would it need protection? Did it need to fly right into shore fighter bases? Shore radars (and later capital ships radars) had a range of 100km, Luftwaffe planes that served in Atlantic avoided them very well, there was enormous space not covered by radar. Besides, He-177 cruised fast, it was a difficult plane to intercept even over land.

and how a plane with a range of 3,100 miles (and I have seen this referred to as ferry range, not combat range in some places)

Wow, a ferry range of 3100 miles, where would Luftwaffe ferry them?? To New York perhaps? :roll:
I have never seen a ferry range quoted in Luftwaffe's bomber load sheets (I have all load sheets for Ju-88A/C, He-111H, Ju-87B/C/D and Bf-110C and many others).

and how a plane with a range of 3,100 miles could have covered the Atlantic to such a degree that it would have stopped convoys, or even seriously threatened them. I stick to my judgement - pipedream.

They woudn't need to, submarines shadowing the convoys could act as radio beacons and precisely mark a path to convoys.
Look at the map: the distace from the points in Norway and France to the point in the middle of Atlantic is aprox 2500 km for both, ships would have to cross an area at least 1000 km wide where they could face the bombers, it would have taken them at least 3 days to cross it. Once spotted the convoy could be hit repeatedly for at least a couple of days. The launch/hit obtained by KG 100 for Hs.293 guided missile was 65% !!! Hs.293 had a 500kg warhead, convoy ships had very little chance of survival after being hit.

Note: don't try to figure out the distances on this map, it is from Google Earth, and the curvature of Earth distorts the distances! I calculated the distances taking the coordinates from Google Earth and putting them in a surface distance calculator.

[JonS]

This is hilarious.
So dear Andreas, we need to produce counterfactual figures to prove wrong what actually happened?!! long live counterfactual history, screw the facts, right?
I think Markus should immediately nominate you as moderator for the "What if" section, we found a man with love for the subject

The comparison between 1943 and 1944 is meaningless. The counterfactual you need to create is:
What would production in 1944 have been, with Germany finally up to full steam for a war they'd started 5 years earlier, had the CBO not been conducted.

Once you have that figure, compare it to what they actually produced to see what the effect of the CBO actually was.

Once you've done that, and just for giggles, you might want to figure out what the effect of a completely unmolested CBO would have been. Because, you know, one of your other flights of fantasy is to leave Germany completely undefended so that landsers don't get to tell each other the "if it's silver is the USAAF, if it's green it's the RAF, and if it's invisible it's the GAF" joke.

You also have not addressed how these He-177 would have been protected against shore-based fighters

Why would it need protection? Did it need to fly right into shore fighter bases? Shore radars (and later capital ships radars) had a range of 100km, Luftwaffe planes that served in Atlantic avoided them very well, there was enormous space not covered by radar. Besides, He-177 cruised fast, it was a difficult plane to intercept even over land.

and how a plane with a range of 3,100 miles could have covered the Atlantic to such a degree that it would have stopped convoys, or even seriously threatened them. I stick to my judgement - pipedream.

They woudn't need to, submarines shadowing the convoys could act as radio beacons and precisely mark a path to convoys.

Yes, because of course the RN and USN would never have thought to deploy picket ships with radar around the convoys. And they would never have used RDF to locate the broadcasting subs. And they would never have used carriers, or CAP. And they would never have thought to try jamming the glider/missiles or screening the ships. Or just shoot the gliders/missiles down. In fact, of course the British and the Americans would have done nothing different at all when when presented with a different situation.

:roll:

The launch/hit obtained by KG 100 for Hs.293 guided missile was 65% !!! Hs.293 had a 500kg warhead, convoy ships had very little chance of survival after being hit.

from: http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/missiles/hs293b.htm

A translation of a Luftwaffe report on the operational use of guided missiles by KG 100 listed a total of 65 operations with 487 aircraft (both Fritz X and Hs.293). A total of 500 rounds were carried, but a number were lost with their aircraft, or returned to base. At the target, 319 bombs were dropped, of which 215 correctly functioned, with a 49.3% hit rate.

In all, 79 enemy naval units, including 40 warships and 39 merchant ships of a gross registered tonnage of 291,000 tons were either partially or totally put out of action, for the loss of 48 aircraft.

[MARABA]

EDIT FOR ORDER Andreas MODERATOR

[-Koenig-]

Quite. And the same can be said for every branch of every nation.

But the flip of that is that if the 37 Me356 'Verlassen Hoffnung' of JG-58a "Georings Own Air Hussars" manage to shoot down 12 out of 13 bombers that happen to fly over Irgendwoberg on the 31st Feb 1945, but completely fail to do anything about the other 10,000 sorties over Northern Germany that morning, then should the performance of Jg-58a be judged on their narrow success, or their overall failure?

I guess the way I would interpret the above would be only to ask if squadron 'x' was performing to it's best capabilities...and in this case shooting down 12 of 13 bombers would be a very good performance. Asking squadron 'x' to do any more would be beyond it's capabilities. Squadron 'x' would at least be remove 12 aircraft from the enemies inventory, so they would be having a small effect on the 10,000 sorties at least. It would in the end be a simple matter of multiplying the success of squadron 'x' enough times to severly reduce those 10,000 sorites being flown by the enemy. All you would need is more squadrons, a luxury that the Luftwaffe did not have since they didn't have enough aircraft, fuel, or pilots. It wasn't that the Luftwaffe squadrons weren't performing relatively well on an individual basis, it was just that there weren't enough of them to make a strategic impact on the air battle over Germany and elsewhere.

Regard,

-Koenig-

[Roddoss72]

WalterS states in his opening statement that the Luftwaffe failed, all i know that as someone who lost two members of my family to pilots of the Luftwaffe they achieved plenty, as i said two of my uncles did not return, one was a tail gunner in a Lancaster Bomber, when his lanc came back home from Germany the turret was turned to one side and the doors were opened and he was hosed out, they could even find his ID tags, they believe that he was hit with 20mm to 30mm cannon fire, and another was shot down in his Spitfire over Belgium and never recovered, the US alone lost an equivalent of two to three US Infantry Divisons worth of aircrew in 1943-45, not to mention the many thousands of British and Commonwealth aircrew, and the 10's of thousands of Soviet aircrew that also died.

WalterS those on the front lines of the Luftwaffe were victorious in the way they performed, the blame for the overall failure is to one man and that is Hermann Goering, he may have been a brilliant fighter pilot and ace but he could not command such a large organization as the Oberkommando des Luftwaffe, he often denied the aircraft manufacturers to develop strategic long range heavy bombers, refused to back Generalleutnant Adolf Galland's stance to redesignate the Me-262 from a fighter-bomber to a fighter exclusively, peristence in the manufacture of the Me-109, and not replace such aircraft with the better Fw-190, dedicated to much effort in the development of exotic warbirds with little or no pratical application to effective aerial warfare.

[Andreas]

Huck

You are clearly living in a fantasy land.

1) Counterfactuals - you may not like them, but they are the only way to properly analyse these questions. If you want to know the effect of something that happened, you need to estimate what the situation would have been without it happening. Then you compare it to what happened, and the difference is the effect of what happened. That is done all the time by serious analysts. You level of analysis - to take two real figures and argue that what happened had no effect because they differ, is not serious analysis.

2) 1943 Soviet offensive. Which well-prepared Soviet offensive was stopped in 1943 please?

3) Sealion - you are wrong. Landing areas were assigned, and divisions had been prepared. That is well documented. If you don't believe me, have a look e.g. into Teske 'Bewegungskrieg', which treats in detail the preparations of 12.ID for Sealion. The division was initially assigned to the first wave, and for a landing at Weymouth. This was in July. Later it was assigned to the 2nd wave and IIRC the Dover area.

4) Synth fuel - I am well aware of that. More men would not necessarily have resulted in more production, since capacity at the plants, and indeed the effect of the bombing offensive limited the potential of synthetic fuel production.

5) You are still not answering which invasion attempt the Germans defeated in 1942. I am aware of one, TORCH, and not aware that it was defeated.

Frankly, I think you have a very strong opinion that is not backed by an awful lot of understanding outside the technical details of the Luftwaffe equipment. Your numerous faulty arguments as outlined above make that quite clear.

All the best

Andreas

[Panzermahn]

Huck

You are clearly living in a fantasy land.

1) Counterfactuals - you may not like them, but they are the only way to properly analyse these questions. If you want to know the effect of something that happened, you need to estimate what the situation would have been without it happening. Then you compare it to what happened, and the difference is the effect of what happened. That is done all the time by serious analysts. You level of analysis - to take two real figures and argue that what happened had no effect because they differ, is not serious analysis.

2) 1943 Soviet offensive. Which well-prepared Soviet offensive was stopped in 1943 please?

3) Sealion - you are wrong. Landing areas were assigned, and divisions had been prepared. That is well documented. If you don't believe me, have a look e.g. into Teske 'Bewegungskrieg', which treats in detail the preparations of 12.ID for Sealion. The division was initially assigned to the first wave, and for a landing at Weymouth. This was in July. Later it was assigned to the 2nd wave and IIRC the Dover area.

4) Synth fuel - I am well aware of that. More men would not necessarily have resulted in more production, since capacity at the plants, and indeed the effect of the bombing offensive limited the potential of synthetic fuel production.

5) You are still not answering which invasion attempt the Germans defeated in 1942. I am aware of one, TORCH, and not aware that it was defeated.

Frankly, I think you have a very strong opinion that is not backed by an awful lot of understanding outside the technical details of the Luftwaffe equipment. Your numerous faulty arguments as outlined above make that quite clear.

All the best

Andreas

1) So may I know what is considered serious analysis, my dear moderator?

2) Soviet offensive of Kharkov in 1943 was stopped by the I and II SS Panzerkorps which resulted Uncle Joe sending peace feelers to Hitler as he was definitely suprised by the resurgent Wehrmacht even after the Stalingrad disaster

3) Check out David Irving's Hitler' War (1991). The author discovered documents that Seelowe was actually a strategic deception to the English

4) You're correct

5) The Anglo-Canadian raid at Dieppe, Southern France 1942 (a "practice with live ammunition" in the words of teh British Government - theoretically supposed to be the prelude for Operation Anvil) was stopped cold by the Germans

Best regards
Panzermahn

[Andreas]

1) So may I know what is considered serious analysis, my dear moderator?

I think I explained this adequately enough in the post. Let me know which part of my explanation you do not understand.

2) Soviet offensive of Kharkov in 1943 was stopped by the I and II SS Panzerkorps which resulted Uncle Joe sending peace feelers to Hitler as he was definitely suprised by the resurgent Wehrmacht even after the Stalingrad disaster

Yes on the first part, but this was not a well-prepared operation. One reason why it failed so spectacularly was that it had outrun its supply lines.

3) Check out David Irving's Hitler' War (1991). The author discovered documents that Seelowe was actually a strategic deception to the English

That is irrelevant - documentary evidence exists that the Weisung was given and that landing sites had been selected, and that two arms (Heer and KM) did seriously prepare for it. Huck seems to contend that one arm (LW) somehow was in a more privileged position, and that it did not follow the Weisung as it was given. I see no reason to believe him on the basis of the evidence he provided.

5) The Anglo-Canadian raid at Dieppe, Southern France 1942 (a "practice with live ammunition" in the words of teh British Government - theoretically supposed to be the prelude for Operation Anvil) was stopped cold by the Germans

Best regards
Panzermahn

'Raid' not 'Invasion'. Huck spoke of an invasion that was defeated in 1942. There is a vast difference between the two, as the Germans found out - who could defeat the raid at Dieppe, but failed to defeat any invasion or major landing with intent to stay in the West (North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Termoli, Nettuno, Normandy, South of France, Walcheren), even when they seriously tried, and when the landing force was not that significant.

All the best

Andreas

[Andreas]

Further discussion on whether Sealion was really entering planning or was just a feint, should be conducted here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=38244

All the best

Andreas

[Kurfürst]

2) 1943 Soviet offensive. Which well-prepared Soviet offensive was stopped in 1943 please?

Err, like two, the one at Kharkov by Manstein, and the other following/parellel to the Stalingrad encirlement ending in defeat for the Red Army - was it Winter Storm? Both massive defeats for the Red Army they are not so keen to talk about.

[Andreas]

2) 1943 Soviet offensive. Which well-prepared Soviet offensive was stopped in 1943 please?

Err, like two, the one at Kharkov by Manstein, and the other following/parellel to the Stalingrad encirlement ending in defeat for the Red Army - was it Winter Storm? Both massive defeats for the Red Army they are not so keen to talk about.

Why don't we just stop guessing and wait until Huck gives us an answer? Both operations you may refer to were anything but well-prepared. But honestly if you can not even get the code-names and settings right, I think you would not be the right person to judge this.

Winter Storm was the name of the failed German attempt to relieve the Stalingrad encirclement, and neither of the operations you may refer to were in parallel with the Stalingrad encirclement.

Further guessing posts will be removed as they derail the thread. Let Huck answer the question - it is part of his argument, and the discussion has no relevance otherwise.

All the best

Andreas