Posted on 06/03/2010 4:19:36 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour
BUMP!
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1940/jun40/f03jun40.htm
Germans closing in on Dunkirk
Monday, June 3, 1940 www.onwar.com
The French defenders at Lille impressed the Germans so much that they were allowed to march into captivity with bayonets fixed and full honors. The battle at Lille was a rearguard action which aided the evacuation from Dunkirk.
On the Western Front... During the day the German attacks around Dunkirk continue. The perimeter contracts, despite a brave counterattack, and German forces reach to within two miles of the harbor. The British and French naval authorities are led to believe that there are only about 30,000 soldiers left in the beachhead and plan the night’s operations accordingly. In the course of the night 26,175 men are evacuated but as the rearguard are marching down to the ships an enormous crowd of French stragglers begins to appear out of cellars and other hiding places. When the last ship leaves at 0340 hours on June 4th there are still 40,000 men left for the Germans to capture.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andrew.etherington/month/thismonth/03.htm
June 3rd, 1940
UNITED KINGDOM: RAF Bomber Command: 4 Group (Whitley). Bombing - oil plants at Hamburg and Gelsenkirchen.
10 Sqn. Eight aircraft to Hamburg. Heavy opposition. All bombed, one crashed on return.
51 Sqn. Eight aircraft to Hamburg. All bombed.
58 Sqn. Eight aircraft to Kamen. Four bombed primary, four bombed alternatives.
77 Sqn. Eleven aircraft to Gelsenkirchen. All bombed, one crashed on return.
102 Sqn. Eleven aircraft to Gelsenkirchen. Two returned early, nine bombed.
First service issue Blackburn Bothas are delivered to No. 1 OTU, Silloth, Cumberland
HMCS Fraser arrived Devonport for refit. One bank of torpedo tubes removed for AA guns. (Dave Shirlaw)
FRANCE:
Paris: 254 civilians are killed when 200 Luftwaffe bombers bombard the city.
Dunkirk: All British troops have left, and the French troops are pushed back to the Dunkirk-Furnes canal, only 1.25 miles from the sea. Because of the narrowness of the strip General Fagalde and Admiral Abrial agreed that tonight will be the last night for evacuating. During the last night, 50 ships take away 38,000 French troops.
The final cost of the northern campaign to France is:
24 infantry divisions; 13 of which were regular, and including 6 of the 7 motorised divisions.
3 light mechanised divisions.
2 light cavalry divisions
1 armoured division.
To which should be added 2 more armoured divisions (the 2 and 4) which were considerably depleted.
NORWEGIAN CAMPAIGN: The British carrier force arrives off Narvik, position 71.00 N, 12.56 E, at 1600, and commenced air operations immediately with Air Defensive Area (A.D.A.) patrols around the task force. Earlier sorties off Norway had established that the weather inshore, which seldom matched that at sea, was the overriding factor. With daylight no spanning virtually the entire 24 hours each day, Wells intended to ensure that his Squadrons knew the weather in advance before departure. Henceforth, Ark Royal would dispatch a single Swordfish inshore each day to verify the current weather before any fighter patrols or strike missions were dispatched.
The days activity saw ADA patrols depart at 1600 (two Swordfish of 820 Squadron), 1835 (two Swordfish of 820 Squadron), 2050 (one from 820 Squadron), and 2337 (one from 820 Squadron). The first weather flights left at 2050 and 2337. Having determined that the weather was acceptable, the first fighter patrol was flown off for Narvik at 2337, two Skuas of 800 Squadron under the newly returned (having spent several days in Norway and then getting back to Scapa, he had missed the ships second voyage off Norway) CO Capt. R. T. Partridge, RM. His wingman was forced to return immediately with a stuck undercarriage, so Partridge continued alone. He met no aerial opposition and returned safely.
Lt. “Fairy” Filmer, a section leader of 803 flies from Ark Royal to make an attack on German ships.
“As we neared Trondheim I was stunned to see the battlecruiser Scharnhorst was surrounded by a heavy cruiser and four destroyers,” he remembered. “It was painfully evident that the firepower from the six naval ships, plus the land batteries, was going to be immense. The tracer bullets commenced rising well before we were within striking distance”.
Despite the heavy flak Filmer completed his attack, but was jumped by two Me 110 fighters. Outgunned and out-manoeuvred, he ditched his aircraft to save his wounded observer, Midshipman Tony McKee, landing wheels-up on the fjord where they were picked up by Norwegians in a small boat. En route to hospital Filmer and McKee planned their escape to Sweden, but they were taken prisoner and flown to Germany.
Meanwhile, back in the Clyde, HMS Illustrious departed Devonport , Plymouth. She was destined to remain there until 21 June, at which point she departed for her shakedown cruise to the West Indies. Her commissioning deprived Coastal Command of three squadrons: 806 Squadron, still equipped with Skuas but expecting the imminent arrival of the first productions versions of the Fleets new 8-gun fighter, the Fulmar I. Also assigned were 815 and 819 Squadrons, each equipped with Swordfish TSRs. (Mark Horan)
CHINA: Chinese forces counter-attack, retaking Hsiangyang and capturing Tsaoyang.
http://worldwar2daybyday.blogspot.com/
Day 277 June 3, 1940
At 4.56 AM, U-37 sinks Finnish SS Snabb with the deck gun, 300 miles west of Cape Finisterre, Spain (1 killed). 20 survivors are picked up by Greek SS Kyriakoula and landed at Cork on 6 June. http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/336.html
Dunkirk. The last of the BEF embark overnight. General Harold Alexander commanding British 1st Infantry Division uses a small boat to check no-one is left behind. At 10:50 AM, Royal Navy “Beachmaster” Captain William “Dunkirk Joe” Tennant signals “Operation completed; returning to Dover”, after calling on a megaphone for any British soldiers, but Churchill insists on evacuating as many French troops as possible, so the Royal Navy returns in the evening. In total, 24,876 Allied troops embark from Dunkirk harbour & only 1,870 from the beaches. However, the shrinking beachhead and crumbling perimeter allow German forces within 2 miles of Dunkirk.
French armed merchant cruiser Ville D’Oran evacuates 212 tons of gold including sacks of gold coins from French gold reserves at Pauillac, arriving at Casablanca June 7. The gold will journey on to USA for safekeeping.
So now the Brits know SCHARNHORST [at least] is at Trondheim. No doubt GLORIOUS will increase her CAPs.
Ping
Three US Hudson bombers attacked a formation of 40 German planes, shooting down 3, putting two more "out of action"...
Makes one wonder if cockamamie stories like this could help convince US planners that bombers such as B-17 Flying Fortresses did not even need fighter escorts to do their missions?
While it didn't help, the mindset of larger heavily armed bombers standing on their own was already well ensconced in the American mindset. At this point, the two most respected minds in air doctrine were Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell. Both men held that strategy that air power alone could win wars without the need of using land forces.
The two books at the time by these men outlining their strategy were "The Command of the Air" and "Winged Defense". In both books large bomber forces would first destroy the enemies ability to wage air war by attacking aerodomes and aircraft manufacturing. It then could be turned on the other means of making war which Douhet expanded to include the "workforce" advocating the bombing of urban areas to reduce the workforce and destroy the moral of the enemy. To Douhet's credit, he was one of the first to preach the doctrines of air superiority, and combined arms attacks.
Billy Mitchell was more focused on the defensive doctrine of air power and along with advocating the same types of offensive strategies as Douhet, he also viewed the actions of taking out the enemies air power as a first line defensive strategy for the American continent. He felt so strongly about this that he suggested that surface navies were going to become obsolete when he said, "we believe the air force will be the first line of defense and that surface navies, at least, will disappear" (Mitchell in 1920). This would cause anomosity between Mitchell and Naval Aviation Chief Admiral William Moffett who felt that Mitchell was, along with his calls for an independent Air Force, trying to take over all naval aviation too. Moffett was to point out that while he agreed that "aviation will settle the next naval war", he added that at the time no aircraft would make it "in one flight from Europe to our coast with a military load" (Moffett in 1925).
There are still a lot of question marks on how to use aviation at this point in time. It is actually fascinating to see the evolution of it as we have gone along and I'm really looking forward to some of the iterations we will still witness in the next 5 years. Currently, the Germans are showing us how combined arms and close air support can make a significant difference on the battlefield which mind you was tried in the First World War, but not on this scale. The Japanese will prove Mitchell right (well, I guess the credit could go to the British at Taranto in honesty) that capital ships were very vulnerable to air strikes and that an aircraft can sink a battleship. I really think the best example that should have made Mitchell proud would have been the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales, two capital ships that were underway when attacked.
We will see the development of strategic bombing, the realization that a formation of bombers with guns are still vulnerable, varying philosophies on targeting and tactics. And finally the rapid development of technology that kept changing the rules.
For now though we are at the point where the United States is starting new ship projects and looking at making a large air force, mostly bombers, to protect the states as a compromise between the naval influence and the army supporters of air power. Notice that we only see small blips on increasing the ground troops themselves. Where are we right now? About 280,000 troops (with a request for 500,000) which is twice what was there before before George Marshall took over as Army Chief of Staff, but still smaller than most other industrial nations.
Was it Douhet who said “The bomber always gets through?”
I’ve heard that attributed to Douhet before though I’ve never read where he has said that specifically.
I would say that if Douhet didn’t say it, it sure can be gleened from the text of Command of the Air. In it he states that “nothing man can do on the surface of the earth can interfere with a plane in flight, moving freely in the third dimension”. That is just in the opening of his book and it is given better context of what he means when he goes into the details of the importance of having control of the air. He describes this importance by describing the impossible situation it is to defend against aircraft.
Here’s some snippets from his evaluation of the problem based on what he saw during the First World War.
“if our pursuit squadrons were not already in the air when the enemy reached its objective - and obviously they could not remain in the air continuously - they could seldom take off in time to prevent the enemy from dropping his load of bombs on his chosen target”
“There was artillery fire, but it seldom hit the mark; when it did, it scored by chance, as a sparrow might be hit by chance with a rifle bullet.”
And his opinion of the mobile anti-aircraft guns is actually kind of funny.
“The behaved much like a man trying to catch a homing pigeon by following him on a bicycle!”
This was why he was such a proponent of air superiority. If you cannot stop the bombers from reaching and hitting their target then you must stop them from flying in the first place. This makes air power’s greatest defensive component, its offensive capability to destroy the enemies ability to conduct air operations. There are aspects of Douhet’s work that I think were incorrect, but I think there were some very good key aspects of air power that he advocated that still hold true even today.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283476/Winston-Churchill-memorabilia-sells-nearly-600-000-auction.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
“”Winston Churchill memorabilia sells for nearly £600,000 at auction...””
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5319588&sid=d8851fc3-addf-4615-8b55-b8e9eee4df38
“”CHURCHILL, Winston S. Autograph letter signed to Eliot Crawshay-Williams, 10 Downing St., 28 June 1940, one page, 8vo; with a letter to Churchill by Crawshay Williams, 27 June 1940.
‘I AM ASHAMED OF YOU FOR WRITING SUCH A LETTER’ — A RIPOSTE TO DEFEATISM. A former assistant private secretary to Churchill, Crawshay-Williams had written a letter cravenly pleading with the prime minister to make terms with Hitler — ‘I’m all for winning this war if it can be done ... But it does seem to me, and, I know, to others, that “if and when” an informed view of the situation shows that we’ve really not got a practical chance of actual ultimate victory, no question of prestige should stand in the way of our using our nuisance value while we have one to get the best peace terms possible. Otherwise, after losing many lives and much money, we shall merely find ourselves in the position of France — or worse. I hope this doesn’t sound defeatist; I’m not that. Only realist’.
Churchill’s response is brief and brutal: ‘I am ashamed of you for writing such a letter. I return it to you — to burn & forget’.””
Thanks for the great posts.
Where theories met practices -- in another context I might say "where the rubber meets the road," but that doesn't seem quite right here -- theories change, practices change, then new theories, new practices, etc., etc.
I have read that until its final months, the criticism of strategic bombers was that they weren't doing enough for the war.
Then allied forces began to see in Germany how much damage was done, so bombing was cut back, especially after Dresden, and eventually our side began apologizing to the poor Germans for being so mean to them.
Of course that's way ahead of the story today.
As of 1940 everyone is still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.
In 1940 apparently they think that bombers can be used to shoot down enemy aircraft.
Amazing.
Stanley Baldwin, Nov. 10, 1932(pre-Hitler)
http://airminded.org/2007/11/10/the-bomber-will-always-get-through/
“”I find myself at the close of a most interesting debate which has been well worth while — I myself should not have regretted a second day — in which there have been a number of most interesting contributions, in profound agreement with one of two of the opening observations of Mr. Lansbury. Disarmament, in my view, will not stop war; it is a matter of the will to peace.
It is often said that two natural instincts make for the preservation of the race — reproduction of the species and the preservation of the species by fighting for safety. The right hon. gentleman is perfectly right. That fighting instinct, although he did not say it, is the oldest instinct we have in our nature; and that is what we are up against. I agree with him that the highest duty of statesmanship is to work to remove the causes of war. That is the difficult and the constant duty of statesmen, and that is where true statesmanship is shown.
But what you can do by disarmament, and what we all hope to do, is to make war more difficult. It is to make it more difficult to start; it is to make it pay less to continue; and to that I think we ought to direct our minds.
I have studied these matters myself for many years. My duty has made me Chairman for five years of the Committee of Imperial Defence. I have sat continuously for 10 years on that Committee, except during the period when the present Opposition were in power, and there is no subject that interests me more deeply nor which is more fraught with the ultimate well or ill being of the human race.
What the world suffers from is a sense of fear, a want of confidence; and it is a fear held instinctively and without knowledge very often. But my own view — and I have slowly and deliberately come to this conclusion — is that there is no one thing that is more responsible for that fear — and I am speaking of what Mr. Attlee called the common people, of whom I am the chief4 — than the fear of the air.
Up to the time of the last War civilians were exempt from the worst perils of war. They suffered sometimes from hunger, sometimes from the loss of sons and relatives serving in the Army. But now, in addition to this, they suffered from the constant fear not only of being killed themselves, but, what is perhaps worse for a man, of seeing his wife and children killed from the air. These feelings exist among the ordinary people throughout the whole of the civilized world, but I doubt if many of those who have that fear realize one or two things with reference to the cause of that fear.
That is the appalling speed which the air has brought into modern warfare; the speed of the attack. The speed of the attack, compared with the attack of an army, is as the speed of a motor-car to that of a four-in-hand. In the next war you will find that any town within reach of an aerodrome can be bombed within the first five minutes of war to an extent inconceivable in the last War, and the question is, Whose moral5 will be shattered quickest by that preliminary bombing?
I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through, and it is very easy to understand that if you realize the area of space. Take any large town you like on this island or on the Continent within reach of an aerodrome. For the defence of that town and its suburbs you have to split up the air into sectors for defence. Calculate that the bombing aeroplanes will be at least 20,000ft. high in the air, and perhaps higher, and it is a matter of mathematical calculation that you will have sectors of from 10 to hundreds of cubic miles.
Imagine 100 cubic miles covered with cloud and fog, and you can calculate how many aeroplanes you would have to throw into that to have much chance of catching odd aeroplanes as they fly through it. It cannot be done, and there is no expert in Europe who will say that it can. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.
The knowledge of this is probably more widespread on the Continent than in these islands. I am told that in many parts of the Continent open preparations are being made to educate the population how best to seek protection. They are being told by lectures; they have considered, I understand. the evacuation of whole populated areas which may find themselves in the zone of fire; and I think I remember to have seen in some of our English illustrated papers pictures of various experiments in protection that are being made on the Continent. There was the Geneva Gas Protocol, signed by 28 countries in June, 1925, and yet I find that in these experiments on the Continent people are being taught the necessary precautions to take against the use of gas dropped from the air.
I will not pretend that we are not taking our precautions in this country. We have done it. We have made our investigations much more quietly, and hitherto without any publicity, but considering the years that are required to make preparations any Government of this country in the present circumstances of the world would have been guilty of criminal negligence had they neglected to make their preparations.6 The same is true of other nations. What more potent cause of fear can there be than this kind of thing that is going on on the Continent? And fear is a very dangerous thing. It is quite true that it may act as a deterrent in people’s minds against war, but it is much more likely to make them want to increase armaments to protect them against the terrors that they know may be launched against them.
We have to remember that aerial warfare is still in its infancy, and its potentialities are incalculable and inconceivable. How have the nations tried to deal with this terror of the air? I confess that the more I have studied this question the more depressed I have been at the perfectly futile attempts that have been made to deal with this problem. The amount of time that has been wasted at Geneva in discussing questions such as the reduction of the size of aeroplanes, the prohibition of bombardment of the civil population, the prohibition of bombing, has really reduced me to despair. What would be the only object of reducing the size of aeroplanes? So long as we are working at this form of warfare every scientific man in the country will immediately turn to making a high-explosive bomb about the size of a walnut and as powerful as a bomb of big dimensions, and our last fate may be just as bad as the first.
The prohibition of the bombardment of the civil population, the next thing talking about, is impracticable so long as any bombing exists at all. In the last War there were areas where munitions were made. They now play a part in war that they never played in previous wars, and it is essential to an enemy to knock these out, and so long as they can be knocked out by bombing and no other way you will never in the practice of war stop that form of bombing.
The prohibition of bombing aeroplanes or of bombing leads you to two very obvious considerations when you have examined the question. The first difficulty about that is this — will any form of prohibition, whether by convention, treaty, agreement, or anything you like not to bomb be effective in war? Quite frankly, I doubt it7 and, in doubting it, I make no reflection on the good faith of either ourselves or any other country. If a man has a potential weapon and has his back to the wall and is going to be killed, he will use that weapon whatever it is and whatever undertaking he has given about it, The experience has shown us that the stern test of war will break down all conventions.8
I will remind the House of the instance which I gave a few weeks ago of the preparations that are being made in the case of bombing with gas, a material forbidden by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. To go a little more closely home, let me remind the House of the Declaration of London, which was in existence in 1914, and which was whittled away bit by bit until the last fragment dropped into the sea in the early spring of 1916.
Sir Austen Chamberlain (Foreign Secretary in Baldwin’s second government) here interjected to say that ‘It was never ratified.’
No, but we regarded it as binding. Let me also remind the House what I reminded them of before — of two things in the last War. We all remember the cry that was raised when gas was first used, and it was not long before we used it. We remember also the cry that was raised when civilian towns were first bombed. It was not long before we replied, and quite naturally. No one regretted seeing it done more than I did. It was an extraordinary instance of the psychological change that comes over all of us in times of war. So I rule out any prospect of relief from these horrors by any agreement of what I may call local restraint of that kind.
As far as the air is concerned there is, as has been most truly said, no way of complete disarmament except the abolition of flying. We have never known mankind to go back on a new invention. It might be a good thing for this world, as I heard some of the most distinguished men in the air service say, if men had never learned to fly.9 There is no more important question before every man, woman, and child in Europe than what we are going to do with this power now that we have got it. I make no excuse for bringing before the House to-night this subject, to ventilate it in this first assembly of the world, in the hope that what is said here may be read in other countries and may be considered and pondered, because on the solution of this question not only hangs our civilization, but before that terrible day comes, there hangs a lesser question but a difficult one, and that is the possible rearmament of Germany with an air force.
There have been some paragraphs in the Press which looked as though they were half inspired, by which I mean they look as though somebody had been talking about something he had no right to, to someone who did not quite comprehend it.10 There have been paragraphs on this subject in which the suggestion was put forward for the abolition of the air forces of the world and the international control of civil aviation. Let me put that in a slightly different way. I am firmly convinced, and have been for some time, that if it is possible the air forces of the world ought to be abolished, but if they are you have got civil aviation, and in civil aviation you have your potential bombers. It is all very well using the phrase “international control,” but nobody knows quite what it means, and the subject has never been investigated. That is my answer to Captain Guest.
In my view, it is necessary for the nations of the world concerned to devote the whole of their mind to this question of civil aviation, to see if it is possible so to control civil aviation that such disarmament would be feasible. I say the nations concerned, because this is a subject on which no nation that has no air force or no air sense has any qualification to express a view; and I think that such an investigation should only be made by the nations which have air forces and who possess an air sense.
Undoubtedly, although she has not an air force, Germany should be a participant in any such discussion which might take place. Such an investigation under the most favourable circumstances would be bound to last a long time, for there is no more difficult or more intricate subject, even assuming that all the participants were desirous of coming to a conclusion. So in the meantime there will arise the question of disarmament only, and on that I would only say a word. Captain Guest raised a point there and pointed out quite truly that this country had never even carried out the programme of the Bonar Law Government in 1922-23 as the minimum for the safety of this country. He expressed a fear — a very natural and proper fear — lest we, with a comparatively small air force among the large air forces of the world, should disarm from that point, and the vast difference between our strength and that of some other countries would remain relatively as great as it was to-day. That kind of disarmament does not recommend itself to the Government.11 I assure my right hon. friend that the point which he raised has been very present to our minds, and, in my view, the position is amply safeguarded. I would make only one or two other observations; my desire having been to direct the minds of people to this subject. It has never really been much discussed or thought out, and yet to my mind it is far the most important of all the questions of disarmament, for all disarmament hangs on the air, and as long as the air exists you cannot get rid of that fear of which I spoke and which I believe to be the parent of many troubles.12
One cannot help reflecting that during the tens or hundreds of millions of years in which the human race has been on this earth, it is only within our generation that we have secured the mastery of the air, and, I do not know how the youth of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been on it.
This is a question for young men far more than it is for us. They are the men who fly in the air, and future generations will fly in the air more and more. Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war. I do not think that we have seen the last great war, but I do not think that there will be one just yet. At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone. But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.13
There are some instruments so terrible that mankind has resolved not to use them. I happen to know myself of at least three inventions deliberately proposed for use in the last War and which were never used. Potent to a degree and, indeed, I wondered at the conscience of the world. If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done. But if they do not feel like that … As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth.14””
Thank you Iowamark. It seems that Mr. Baldwin did not conceive of radar and radio vectoring of interceptor fighter units.
A bomber may always get through, but not all of them will.
In retrospect that is rather astounding isn't it.
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