Paul L wrote: ↑Sat Feb 16, 2019 9:53 pmwadinga wrote: ↑Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:45 pm Hello Paul L,
Peddle what stuff? That real human beings are killed and maimed in naval battles and that they are real events that happened, and that we are not talking about "annihilating" sprites in video games or playing with toys in the bath?
As for emphasising the bravery and sacrifice of men who sailed voyage after voyage in virtually unarmed merchant ships menaced by the Third Reich's selection of weapons, and whose massive contribution to Allied victory did make our comfortable 21st century lifestyle possible, I will make no apology. 36,749 seamen and women were lost by enemy action according to the Wikipedia entry. This includes Indians, Australians and Canadians and probably Chinese but not Americans, Norwegians, Greeks, Swedes or other nationalities. Maybe you should view Wikipedia British merchant seamen of World War II or better still the entry for Canadian Pacific SS Beaverford.
Propaganda? Would you like to live in a world where the Third Reich had won, I suspect not. They were not strong on democracy, freedom and free speech. Their marine personnel exhibited bravery and sacrifice too, and we acknowledge that here, but they were not fighting for freedom or democracy. This site is commendably apolitical but not amoral.
Actually it might be a better world today- 3/4 century after the war -if Germany won.
As for democracy, no leadership at the time wanted the fiasco that was democracy , and despite what you might think , we all knew we were fighting to save the empire and the wealth which would help us. Chants of fighting for FREEDOM & DEMOCRACY were salve for the masses to help them deal with the terror that was war.
As to the original post , The raider doctrine that was being formed emphasised attacking convoys to enhance U-Boat attacks, by eliminating escorts and scattering convoy, but running away from superior threats!!!! Key was to operate in bad weather to minimize Wallie detection of these raiders, giving their B-Dienst teams time to detect convoy passage.
AGS revealed these guideline may not be enough and maybe only engaging inferior convoy escort forces could be acceptable. Raeder blurred this whole distinction by building a small fleet of battleships instead of more raiders and encouraging battleship clashes.
By late 1941 B-Dienst , had uncovered the Wallie convoy system and perfected merchant code cracking of convoys so they could be reliably detected and wolf pacts vectored to attack such convoys. But there were never enough wolf pacts around. As it was- raiders were demonstrating that they too could duplicate Wolf Pact successes, and approached the tantalizing possibility of a combined Wolf Pact -Raider - LW Patrol Bomber attacks on such convoys.
.Actually it might be a better world today- 3/4 century after the war -if Germany won
Wow.
Just.
Wow.