British Army at home September 1940

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Knouterer
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#211

Post by Knouterer » 07 Apr 2014, 22:53

Dunserving wrote:
Have you done so much as glance at the imagery of Lympne detailed above, now on the Google Earth site?

You really ought to give it some serious study!
Well, if you tell me that the airfield was such a scene of total devastation that it would have been of little or no use to the Germans , even if they had managed to capture it in spite of local defences, designated counterattacking forces, the pipe bombs, heavy artillery taking it under fire, etc. etc., I'll gladly take your word for it ... no argument from me.
Although in fairness we shouldn't underestimate the Germans' capacity for rapid and effective improvisation in seemingly hopeless conditions, of which they gave many proofs during the war, don't you agree?
"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it." Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

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phylo_roadking
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#212

Post by phylo_roadking » 07 Apr 2014, 23:35

I think he's actually referring to the fact that if you actually looked at the damage done, you'd find that a very large percentage of the airfield's accomodation huts and other buildings had been totally flattened...and given that there's no sign at all of temporary tented accomodation - your as yet wholly-unsubstantiated claim regarding there being c.400 staff at Lympne, the ground staff of almost two full squadrons - or in fact at ANY Emergency Landing Ground - looks even MORE tenuous...

Not only do we know that Lympne didn't have aviation fuel or ammunition...we NOW know that they couldn't even properly fill in the bomb craters on the flight line...AND that it's AA Command-assigned LAA had been downgraded by 50%!
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Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...


Dunserving
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#213

Post by Dunserving » 08 Apr 2014, 17:41

:thumbsup:

Knouterer
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#214

Post by Knouterer » 08 Apr 2014, 19:36

Frankly speaking, I'm getting just a little bit sick and tired of this continuous senseless bickering, this mocking, aggressive and spiteful tone, this having my own words continually quoted back at me as if they contain some momentous new revelation, etc. etc. etc., so I'll take a couple of weeks off from this thread.
In the (probably vain) hope that certain people will cool down in the meantime and realize that the purpose of the exercise is not to score points off each other, or "pulling people up" as Phylo puts it so gracefully.

Apologies to all those who may have found certain bits interesting, but there's only so much I'm prepared to put up with.
Gerard
"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it." Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

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phylo_roadking
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#215

Post by phylo_roadking » 08 Apr 2014, 21:03

Frankly speaking, I'm getting just a little bit sick and tired of this continuous senseless bickering, this mocking, aggressive and spiteful tone, this having my own words continually quoted back at me as if they contain some momentous new revelation, etc. etc. etc., so I'll take a couple of weeks off from this thread.
In the (probably vain) hope that certain people will cool down in the meantime and realize that the purpose of the exercise is not to score points off each other, or "pulling people up" as Phylo puts it so gracefully.

Apologies to all those who may have found certain bits interesting, but there's only so much I'm prepared to put up with.
Gerard
Frankly speaking....? Well, frankly speaking, all the good content you've contributed is in my opinion at least outweighed by your unwillingness to take on board ANY of the points your own material raises. You consistently ignore really MAJOR issues with your statements, and in among the facts throw out assumptions and personal opinions without proofs that whether you like it or not....and you don't....don't have anything like the weight you'd wish them to.

Need we go over the list again? Your refusal to take on board that over 75% of the hutted acomodation at Lympne was totally destroyed and couldn't have accomodated 400 men, that it didn't even warrant its own Commanding officer if it supposedly had a complement of 400 men, you own material shows that its AA Command-assigned defences were reduced by 50%, that the flightline couldn't be properly repaired, that on occasion it couldn't even re-arm or refuel aircraft...and yet the RAF were supposed to have left 400 valuable skilled and semi-skilled staff there against the chance of a damaged aircraft happening by...without setting at least some of them to filling in holes??? Looking back at the issues with the emergency batteries, you've chosen to avoid the whole issue that even your own contributed material shows that your example battery wasn't able to practice fire UNTIL their gunnery officers received training fron the Royal Navy...exactly as Lavery says...and then there was the statement I've invited you several times to corrrect that all the emergency batteries of 1940 in the proposed invasion except one were at sea level...when at least two others were indeed above sea level. Not as high above it as Folkestone maybe, but still many feet above storm high water mark. It seems to have passed you entirely that elevation meant range - observed range ;) The batteries at Dungeness were limited by being that close to high water, it wasn't an advantage...given that at sea level you can only see three miles to the horizon - seriously, why do you think BOPs were built as high as available terrain or construction permitted?

Senseless bickering? Did it ever strike you that taking these points and reservations on board might have improved your content? That they might actually have complemented your initial points if you had taken them and ran with them?

By the way - you do know how forums work, don't you? They're not vanity projects, the reason why any member CAN post in a thread is because they may just happen to see something contained in your posts that YOU don't...
this having my own words continually quoted back at me as if they contain some momentous new revelation, etc. etc. etc.,
...but in THIS case, where your own words are quoted back at you, it's to assist in pointing up oversights and refusals to countenance any alternative viewpoints.

And finally...
In the (probably vain) hope that certain people will cool down in the meantime
...it would appear there's only one of us needs to do that.
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...

rmb1956
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#216

Post by rmb1956 » 09 Apr 2014, 12:32

phylo_roadking ----Personal Opinion... It appears to me that everyone wants to dominate the conversation and do not like others opinions being of relevance to the topic ..Surely this forum It does NOT entitle Anyone!! to bully and abuse fellow members about subjects they think they know best about..I am very new to this forum but since joining I have received post after post with personal tit for tat postings ...I joined to watch listen and read about the History of WWII and the brave people who fought and died in it. NOT !! listen with mother and immature rantings of the sort posted by you lot and others!! (Note I said others) Kindly STOP IT.. All are entitled to opinions IF? they take it on board or not is for them to choose.. Its called free speech and democracy NOW PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF OTHER MEMBERS STOP BICKERING AND CLOSE THIS SUBJECT POLITELY Thank you very much

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phylo_roadking
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#217

Post by phylo_roadking » 09 Apr 2014, 14:36

Kindly STOP IT.. All are entitled to opinions IF? they take it on board or not is for them to choose.. Its called free speech and democracy NOW PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF OTHER MEMBERS STOP BICKERING AND CLOSE THIS SUBJECT POLITELY Thank you very much
rmb1956, noone has been bullied here; IF you care to look back, you'll see that the personal attacks have ALL come from one direction. Repeatedly, and from the very very first sentence of the very first post. To repeat, there have been several VERY pronounced oversights with one poster's material and he refuses to brook any criticism....OR take the issues on board - to the detriment of the good content brought on the thread...

...despite the OP's post at the very start of this thread...
All suggestions and corrections welcome of course.
Except they haven't been.

Can I recommend you check out the forum's terms and conditions?
I. Policy and Purpose

The policy and general purpose of the forum is to provide for an exchange of views and facts on the topic, and to allow discussion of the different points of view....

Under these circumstances, in my opinion the best policy is to provide as many facts on the issue as possible, allow the contributors to state their point of view in a civil manner, and let the readers make up their own minds.
....and that includes facts that particular posters may not happen to like. That is what forums are about - the free exchange of information in a discussion format. No, of course they don't HAVE to take anything they don't like on board - but they also have to accept the effects of not doing so.

Just as a final point - the subject is not "closed" as you put it; there are still a number of important issues that have arisen and which remain to be chased down and I for one will be continuing to do so. That's how threads work; noone "owns" them except the site owners.
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...

rmb1956
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#218

Post by rmb1956 » 09 Apr 2014, 15:29

Good for you , well done , bravo, "Continue to do so" your right No One Owns The Site But from your words above it shows very clearly to me and others who care to read everything that YOU! are DOMINEERING the subject between you, when I say close the subject I meant Close the bickering..Blaming others for personal attacks is a clear example of it and " to continue to do so" is the best example possible that YOU want the last word.. Well you have it I for one am leaving it ...IT IS NOT history or good conversing is just a game of pinpong between you Also quoting the rule book is the clearest evidence that You think know best you know best and are a bully to the fact END OF.. From me OUT !!!!

Dunserving
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#219

Post by Dunserving » 09 Apr 2014, 17:07

I have not always agreed with Phylo, but on this he is right. Completely right.

There has been much nonsense written - an airfield with allegedly 400 personnel where photographic evidence makes it perfectly clear that there is no accommodation for them either on station or nearby. An airfield where bomb craters in the grass airfield have not been properly filled in, which would not be an issue if there really were 400 men there. We are asked to believe that those men were there when we know there was no officer in charge of the place. 400 men without supervision? In the RAF of the 1940s? When people write such stuff it is perfectly reasonable to ask them to back it up with a reputable source - and to disbelieve them when they cannot.

As someone who lives in the area, and knows it well, I have in the past commented on what is there, what can be seen etc, and have been told I am wrong by people who have never been there, but who have read a post on the web or seen a picture. That kind of nonsense has not come from Phylo.

He is right and that is all there is to it.

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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#220

Post by David Thompson » 09 Apr 2014, 23:11

It's time to temporarily lock this thread, to allow the participants to cool off. We don't allow personal comments about other posters here.

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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#221

Post by David Thompson » 12 Apr 2014, 06:32

This thread is re-opened for civil discussion. Gentlemen, please try to comply with our rules.

Dunserving
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#222

Post by Dunserving » 12 Apr 2014, 08:32

I have used the time to study the 1940 PR imagery.
Of a variety of airfields.
Manston. Rochester. West Malling. Eastchurch. To name but a few.

And then I looked back at RAF Lympne..........

Can you see what it is yet?

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phylo_roadking
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#223

Post by phylo_roadking » 12 Apr 2014, 18:34

There have been several anecdotes brought to the thread so far regarding the ability of RAF ground staff at Lympne being able to repair battle-damaged aircraft; however, closer inspection of these anecdotes, somewhat at variance...supposedly...with Lympne's equally historically-recorded inability to re-arm or even refuel fighters during the height of the Battle of Britain, reveals that the anecdotes all have one thing in common...

The type of aircraft being repaired; they're all Hurricanes 8O

Why would this be important? Well, I've already referred the OP to John James' "The Paladins", an invaluable reference about the late interwar and thus 1939-40 organisation of the RAF. James not only deals with the reorganisation and re-expansion of the "flying" role of the RAF in the pre-war years - he ALSo spends a long chapter and parts of others discussing that equally vital part of the RAF establishment - it's ground staff and their technical training...

And one of the factlets to be found in James is that construction of the Hawker Hurricane was essentially VERY "traditional" in period terms. All the fairings and control surfaces etc. were canvas doped over wood formers...the wood formers surrounding the basic three-rail steel tube "core" of the fuselage. This meant that the majority of superficial battle damage that was done to Hurricanes could be repaired with wood, a hacksaw, a spokeshave, canvas and dope! And the level of handicraft skills that British boys were coming out of secondary schools with in the 1930s and 1940s! Hurricanes could be repaired by any RAF artificer grade using skills that had been "current" since WWI!

In fact...as James goes on to note in his chapter on the RAF's parallel interwar development of its technical grades and technical colleges to provide enough ground staff - it was the SPITFIRE that was trouble for ground crews! They had a lot of trouble effectively repairing battle damage to Spitfires, it meant a whole new skillset of pop rivetting and sealing metal surfaces etc, because of its all-metal construction....and it was particularly difficult to properly "repair" damage to the fuselage monocoque! 8O

(just as an aside - even Supermarine was having production problems in 1939 and 1940 with the all-metal fabrication of the Spitfire!)

Here - at RAF Lympne the Emergency Landing Ground in August and Spetember 1940 - we hear about HURRICANES being repaired by the skeleton ground staff. In other words - they were carrying out some of the simplest repairs 1940 Fighter Command ground crew COULD carry out! There was nothing impressive or miraculous about what they were doing - in fact, the RFC ground staff at the WWI-era Lympne Acceptance Field would have recognised the skills and tasks involved! :o

Even BEFORE RAF Lympne was relegated by events to an Emergency Landing Field, it was only a dispersal field for squadrons at Biggin Hill; noone should overlook what a dispersal field did. A minimum "crew" at a dispersal field could top off tanks, re-arm....IF there was ammunition! ...and push a starter trolley back and forth. They did not do any "support" or maintenance beyond that - every evening "dispersed" flights flew back to their base of operations/maintenance base. Therefore, even when Lympne WAS able to accomodate forward flights from Biggin Hill...that didn't mean each aircraft's three-man rigger/fitter/armourer group moved forward each day with it; instead, they had to go mental each night at Biggin when the flights dispersed forward to Lympne and others returned there.
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
Lord, please keep Kevin Bacon alive...

Dunserving
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#224

Post by Dunserving » 13 Apr 2014, 09:11

That fits perfectly with the very poor condition of Lympne compared with other RAF airfields on Kent. Including airfields that were subjected to more severe attacks.

Knouterer
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Re: British Army at home September 1940

#225

Post by Knouterer » 13 Apr 2014, 11:29

phylo_roadking wrote:Looking back at the issues with the emergency batteries, you've chosen to avoid the whole issue that even your own contributed material shows that your example battery wasn't able to practice fire UNTIL their gunnery officers received training fron the Royal Navy...exactly as Lavery says...
That is not what Lavery says, and you know it. As you said yourself a few pages back: "Lavery notes that aiming and fire control systems were of the naval type and parties had to be sent round to re-train the Army to use them in situ."

So far you have not provided one single instance of that actually happening. And before you start twisting my words in all directions again, I never said that the army didn't need ANY help from the Royal Navy, I merely pointed out that coast defence had long been the responsibility of the Royal Artillery (and not primarily of the Navy as was the case in some other countries, notably Germany) and that therefore they were not nearly as helpless as Lavery and you seem to believe.

Also, please note that the WD item about the officers going on a "short course on naval equipments" that you so triumphantly point to, does not say WHO was dispensing these courses. It may have been the Navy; it may equally well - perhaps more likely - have been the Coast Artillery.

To be clear, I am not excluding the possibility that such training by naval parties after the batteries had been installed may have occurred here or there, but to claim that it was everywhere the case is simply a misrepresentation of the known facts - which include the fact that a large portion of the guns, aiming and firing systems were not "of the naval type", certainly not in the sense that the Coast Gunners had never seen anything of the kind before.

In general, it would be easier for me to "take on board" your comments if you didn't keep shifting your ground constantly. One day you claim the emergency batteries were too high up on the cliffs to hit anything, the next day that they were too close to the waterline ...
Last edited by Knouterer on 13 Apr 2014, 15:17, edited 1 time in total.
"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it." Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

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