Oldest surviving Battle of Britain pilot dies aged 99

[JU_88]

:(

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2221792/Oldest-surviving-pilot-fight-Battle-Britain-Spitfire-shot-dies-aged-99.html

Well my subsim nick rather ironic here, but - Farewell hero and thanks for all that you have done for us, I raise my cup of coffee to you.:salute:

[Jimbuna]

~SALUTE~

[Gerald]

RIP Sir!

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

Rest in peace good man!:salute::salute:

[Garion]

Thank You

Rest in Peace now

Gary

[Oberon]

Thank you, and goodbye. :salute:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/10/23/1350985724100/William-Walker-010.jpg

[Bubblehead1980]

RIP:salute:

[eddie]

May he rest in peace.

[Schroeder]

The end of an era. Rest in peace.

[AVGWarhawk]

There is no greater loss than a piece of living history. RIP.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

RIP Sir

[vienna]

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few..."

-- Winston Churchill

Never were truer words spoken...

RIP and accept our humble thanks...

<o>

[Oberon]

http://www.battleofbritainmemorial.org/wp-content/themes/bob/images/headers/header3.jpg

Flight Lieutenant William Walker reads his poem 'Our Wall' dedicated to the Christopher Foxley-Norris memorial wall at Capel-Le-Ferne:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiJJFR-5aZc

[Fubar2Niner]

Thank you for yours and your comrades bravery sir. Sleep in peace :salute:

[Herr-Berbunch]

Flight Lieutenant William Walker reads his poem 'Our Wall' dedicated to the Christopher Foxley-Norris memorial wall at Capel-Le-Ferne:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiJJFR-5aZc

Chris Evans played it twice on his breakfast show, very moving! :salute:

[Jimbuna]

Flight Lieutenant William Walker reads his poem 'Our Wall' dedicated to the Christopher Foxley-Norris memorial wall at Capel-Le-Ferne:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiJJFR-5aZc

Nice one :cool:

[Platapus]

One has to wonder how the Battle of Britain would have changed if the Graf Zeppelin ii (Lz-130) had collected the right frequencies from the Chain Home antennas in Aug 39 (German General Martini's weather radio unit transmitting at the same time also adversely affected the SIGINT collection).

Some bad collection and analysis that cost the Germans dearly. :yep:

[Jimbuna]

I seriously doubt they'd make any difference at all because of their size and speed they'd have made easy targets for AA fire and even our most obsolete fighters.

[JU_88]

Agreed, the Germans may have won if the Luftwaffe had continued to bomb radar installations and Fighter Command while they were on the ground - Instead of getting disctracted by 'tit for tat' city bombing. That was really how it went wrong for them.

[Oberon]

Even if the Germans had won the Battle of Britain, it's debatable how much good it would have done them. It could have scared the cabinet into mounting a bloodless coup against Churchill and signing a ceasefire/peace treaty with Germany, which it could be argued was Hitlers goal all along, but equally Churchill could have called Hitlers bluff, and as post-war wargames have shown, Operation Sealion would have been a complete disaster for Germany as it utterly failed to take into account the intervention of the Royal Navy, furthermore, even the wargames didn't take into account the likelihood that we would have used chemical and biological warfare on the Germans the second they stepped onto British soil, a fact which has only come to light in recent years.
It would be a lot of bloodshed and would ruin the Wehrmacht just when Hitler needed it the most for Operation Barbarossa which was his key goal from day one.

Not to dismiss or in any way lessen the feats of the brave men who flew in the skies over Southern England in 1940, they kept the light on and kept us in the war so when the time came there was a handy giant aircraft carrier to launch the invasion of Europe from. :yep:

Funny the Graf Zeppelin is mentioned, here's a pic of it on its infamous tour:

http://www.shford.fslife.co.uk/ShingleSt/photos/zeppelin.jpg
Passing just over the seafront of the town I live in, on its way down the coast to where radar was being perfected at Bawdsey and Shingle Street. :yep:

[JU_88]

But didnt the Germans early air superiority (over the channel and the north sea) force the bulk of RN to retreat to northern bases in the Orkneys and Loch Ewe etc?
Imagine if fighter command had actually been crippled, much of the RNs fleet would have been sitting ducks for both the Luftwaffe and the U-boats without decent air support.
Also there is no way their warships could have reached the Channel from the North fast enough to respond to an invasion force from France.
I dont think Britain was relying that heavily on the RN's protection against Operation Sealion, geography would have made it very difficult for them to operate effectively.

[Oberon]

But didnt the Germans early air superiority (over the channel and the north sea) force the bulk of RN to retreat to northern bases in the Orkneys and Loch Ewe etc?
Imagine if fighter command had actually been crippled, much of the RNs fleet would have been sitting ducks for both the Luftwaffe and the U-boats without decent air support.
Also there is no way their warships could have reached the Channel from the North fast enough to respond to an invasion force from France.
I dont think Britain was relying that heavily on the RN's protection against Operation Sealion, geography would have made it very difficult for them to operate effectively.

The invasion force would have made it ashore fine, but the supplies would prove difficult.
Admittedly the wargame I mention did assume that the Luftwaffe had not won superiority over Southern England, but even with air superiority the Royal Navy could operate from places like Southampton, Devonport and the East Anglian coast on sorties out into the Channel, particularly at night, and cause disruption at the docks which the Germans were to use.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/OperationSealion.svg/707px-OperationSealion.svg.png

Going by this map and assuming that 10 Group has been knocked out, the army would be able to reach as far as the Reigate area before it comes within range of 11 and 12 Group. Of course, the Luftwaffe in turn will have access to 10 Groups airfields once they're repaired so there would be less problems with range...however fuel supplies would become a problem since they'd have to be constantly shipped over from France since the fuel tanks in Kent would have been sabotaged and destroyed for the most part.
Furthermore they have to get ashore first, and most of Germanys landing craft were not the LSTs or LCPs that the Yanks had at D-Day but barges more used to crossing canals and rivers, not the famously choppy Channel, especially in September which is when the invasion would be taking place, assuming that the bombing campaign against 10 Group airfields carried on from the 4th September point instead of the gradual switch over to the daylight and night time raids on London. So that means that not many tanks and artillery would be coming over in the first waves, and a squadron of MBTs could have caused absolute havoc with the force, or a force of expendable destroyers.
This is without calling back forces from the Med and Asia, with those back we would have enough warships to halt shipments across the Channel even with losses from enemy bombers, and let's not forget that Goering was notorious for his inability to co-operate with the Kriegsmarine and Wehrmacht, particularly the Kriegsmarine, so naval bombers would have been few and far between.
So, really, the real victors from Operation Sealion would be the Italians and the Japanese who would have faced reduced resistance from British forces in their respective theatres. Germany would have been tied down in a bloody war in Southern England until either a) they withdrew or b) they signed a ceasefire with Britain and withdrew, thus putting Barbarossa back by a year, allowing Stalin to put more tanks into service, and the Americans to enter the war...although admittedly, if the North African campaign went better then oil wouldn't be as big a problem as it became.

Hitler wanted Britain subdued, not subjucated, he hoped that we'd settle for a peace treaty under the threat of invasion, thus enabling him to reduce the forces in France to pour into the meatgrinder of Barbarossa.

Of course, there are a number of factors that if they had fallen in Germanys favour could have tipped the balance in their favour and enable the sort of German victory that you find in 'SS-GB' or 'The Man in the High Castle', some have no doubt been discussed to death on this forum:
http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=180901

However, generally, I don't think Sealion was ever intended to be put into practice, much to the relief of the entire Luftwaffe staff, Raeder himself said in 1940 that:
".....the emphatic reminder that up until now the British had never thrown the full power of their fleet into action. However, a German invasion of England would be a matter of life and death for the British, and they would unhesitatingly commit their naval forces, to the last ship and the last man, into an all-out fight for survival. Our Air Force could not be counted on to guard our transports from the British Fleets, because their operations would depend on the weather, if for no other reason. It could not be expected that even for a brief period our Air Force could make up for our lack of naval supremacy."


Although there is one other possibility which is pure guesswork, and the true details of which won't be known for another ten to thirty years, and that's the following proposal.
At the end of August, at some point between the 31st August and the 7th September, a number of German E-boats crossed the North Sea in a raid intended to land near Orford Ness where radar and other technological research was taking place. Their force was picked up on radar, and aircraft scrambled, they dealt a fierce blow to the force, but they carried on, eventually reaching Shingle Street at some point around 11pm to midnight where they met fierce resistance from forces which had been deployed there as the raid had been tracked across the North Sea. Flame Fougasse defences in the shallow water set the sea on fire as the German forces came ashore, hundreds were badly burnt and killed, and the whole raid became disorganised and chaotic. The boats swiftly gathered up what survivors and bodies that they could, and fled back to Holland and Belgium.
A week later Hitler cancelled Sealion.

Of course, it's an old folk tale, the Shingle Street invasion, and there's no real records of it, but a lot of eyewitness accounts, and it could equally be a good example of black propaganda. I wonder if we'll ever know for sure. I don't subscribe to too many conspiracy theories, but this one, I dunno... :hmmm:

[Sailor Steve]

Operation Sealion would have been a complete disaster for Germany as it utterly failed to take into account the intervention of the Royal Navy
I think they did take that into account. I'm pretty sure the thinking was that if the RAF was out of the picture the Luftwaffe could deal with the RN. I'm not saying it was so; only that that was the idea.

furthermore, even the wargames didn't take into account the likelihood that we would have used chemical and biological warfare on the Germans the second they stepped onto British soil, a fact which has only come to light in recent years.
It would be a lot of bloodshed and would ruin the Wehrmacht just when Hitler needed it the most for Operation Barbarossa which was his key goal from day one.
Yeah, that could have made a huge difference.

[Jimbuna]

Just one small point not yet mentioned....Hitler could have lessened the impact the RN would potentially have if he'd blockaded the southern ports with mines but that was largely stopped by the smaller units of the RN such as Destroyers, MTB and MGB's which were in action on most evenings.

I remember my father telling me of the many firefights he witnessed between said forces from either side as his ship was approaching some port or other.

"A destroyer or corvette would come down our column (in single file because of a narrow swept navigation channel) and through a loudhaler say something along the lines of 'Keep to the left/right of the buoy on a course of.......degrees, we have some chums in need of assistance as I'm sure you can hear' and off they would charge into the night".

[STEED]

:salute: