The great China Hack - Epic infiltration

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Originally Posted by Ducked
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
......I'm still amazed to see the flippant response to the folks that saved your arrogant behinds as you were being bombed into oblivion by the same group that you put in the position for that to take place, yet were too clueless to see it happening.


bombed into oblivion?

Battle of Britain was 1940.

Britain won.

Mostly a British "show" (one of the reasons they call it the Battle of Britain) though there were roughly 20% foreign pilots (including a handful of Americans). Biggest foreign contingents were the Poles and the Czechs, who got their own squadrons.

Britain did get its "arrogant behinds" saved by a foreign power later, but if there was a flippant response above to the Soviet Union's contribution to the defeat of fascism, I must have missed it.


- Had Beaverbrook not come over from Canada prior to WWI, his revamping of the production system for aircraft would not have occurred during WWII. I assume you are familiar with his role? The ability to produce aircraft was critical to the victory
- The "Battle of Britain" was dubbed so by Churchill after the Battle of France in a speech as the imminence of the campaign became obvious.
- Of the 20% foreign pilot count: 147 were Poles, 127 New Zealanders and 112 Canadians, followed by 88 Czechs as the biggest numbers.
- The Battle of Britain was of course won by the British, but London was heavily bombed.
- Had the Germans not decided to destroy their relations with the Soviets, there likely would have been a 2nd campaign against Britain.
- Of anybody, the Soviets suffered the highest casualties by a wide margin and their contribution cannot be ignored, of that I believe we are in agreement.

But let's turn our attention Normandy for a second:

The Canadians were the only units to reach their D-Day objectives, although most units fell back a few kilometers to stronger defensive positions. In particular, the Douvres Radar Station was still in German hands, and no link had been established with Sword Beach.

By the end of D-Day, 15,000 Canadians had been successfully landed, and the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division had penetrated further into France than any other Allied force, despite having faced strong resistance at the water's edge and later counterattacks on the beachhead by elements of the German 21st and 12th SS Hitlerjugend Panzer divisions on June 7 and June 8.


and

By June 19, when severe storms interrupted the landing of supplies for several days and destroyed the Omaha harbor, the British had landed 314,547 men, 54,000 vehicles, and 102,000 tons of supplies, while the Americans put ashore 314,504 men, 41,000 vehicles, and 116,000 tons of supplies.

The contributions by Britain's allies was paramount to the success of not only D-Day, but the entire Normandy campaign.

You seem to be implying that it was the Soviets that saved Britain. Are you denying the significance of D-Day?
 
Originally Posted by SonofJoe
Well that's a bit of a bad show!

You give The Yanks an open goal to shoot at for a few hours and what do they do? Nothing!

Okay, should anyone be interested in continuing, here are a couple of aviation themed responses...

To Ducked...

'Winning' The Battle Of Britian' is one of the defining moments of our national story. However it might be more honest to say it was a draw. Why? Well Eric 'Winkle' Brown, a hugely decorated Naval test pilot & fluent German speaker interviewed a lot of their top brass before the Nuremberg Trials. When he interviewed Hermann Goering, he asked his views of TBOB and Goering said, based on each other's losses, he thought it was a draw. Eric Brown went away and checked out what Goering said & concluded that he was right. The primary reason we 'won' was Hitler gave up on invading The UK and pulled The Luftwaffe eastwards to support the invasion of The USSR.

Somewhere on YouTube, there's a video of Brown telling the story in full. I can't find it but did find the essence of the story here...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-Biggles-look-like-wimp-tells-story.html


I just find the perceived downplaying of the significance of involvement by the Canadians and Americans somewhat insulting. My grandfather served in the RCAF initially as a tailgunner, my grandmother's brother was part of the Devil's Brigade. Both of them could have easily ended up dead fighting for the security of a land they'd never before been to, but did so because it was right.
 
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