Recent content by fester

I disagree. Look at the USN procurement requests pre-war as an example. The USN between 1936 and 1941 funding and wish list was for the following: BB: 2 North Carolina 4 South Dakota 6 Iowa (you could argue were a heavy BC) 5 Montana & 6 Alaska light battlecruisers (which really has a weird...

June 16, 1940 Italy declared war on France and Great Britain. The Royal Navy began to mine approaches to Italian ports and plans to whittle down the Italian Fleet were put into action. The two opposing armies on the coastal Alps glowered menacingly at each other as they hid behind their heavily...

June 3, 1940 Northumberland The forty Royal Engineers sweated in the late spring sun. The last of the concrete was being poured into the bunker’s wall mold. Steel rods stuck upwards as they had nothing to reinforce yet. Another work party three hundred yards away was also working on their own...

May 25, 1940 852 Berck, France A dozen tanks and seven score men rested. They had reached the sea. Six men had dismounted a few minutes ago to assess the state of the small town’s petrol station. They had come back with a single French police officer in front of them. He insisted that the...

May 18, 1940 0745 Montcornet France Forty four D-2 tanks were tasked to advance on the crossroads as soon as the artillery group shifted their targets to the German rear. Thirty one tanks advanced. The others were scattered between the railhead at Reims and the treeline at the southern edge of...

Why would Italy jump in if the French were still in decent shape and not collapsing? There is no Mediterranean strategy available in this scenario.

As Carefully Slowly

May 12, 1940 0733 near Bodo Norway Eleven men were in the water. Their five hundred ton coaster was forty yards behind them, broken in half. The stern was sinking while the empty forward section floated around like a cork filled child’s bath toy. They had delivered another cargo to the Allied...

May 11, 1940 0300 village of Troisvierges, Luxemburg The night shift was the easy shift for the village police. The few taverns had closed hours ago and the usual greatest threat overnight was the lack of coffee. Tonight was different. The border crossing into Germany had been empty for hours...

Let's get ready to RUMBLE

May 2, 1940 HMS Hood Plymouth She was immobile. Power was flowing through the hundreds of tools civilians and landlubbers brought aboard her. Her engines had been opened up. Thousands of tubes were being replaced by both her crew and the yard workers. Some of the tubes were in fine condition...

April 17, 1940 0517 near Stavanger, Norway Six ships’ guns flashed. Fourteen heavy shells heaved skyward along with sixteen lighter shells from the destroyers. The airfield had been captured by paratroopers the previous week. The defenders were able to put heavy equipment on the concrete runway...

April 9, 1940 0418 Aboard HMoNS Draug Four three inch guns tracked the merchant ship Main. The Norwegian crew had been hearing radio snippets of foreign operations in Norwegian waters. British minelayers were active in the north while a German transport had been sunk near Kristiansand while...

March 25, 1940 St. Nazaire, France France’s sole aircraft carrier, Bearn, had a quiet war. She had been used as a beater for the hunting groups, her aircraft spotters and flushers for the cruisers of the Force du Raid. Once Graf Spee had been harried and sunk, she was taken off of active...

Agreed... but matching forces with missions means that the active forward defense concept is likely not a viable concept until late 1942 or 1943 so what is the plan until the force levels are viable for the desired mission.