I never understand why Krigersmarine don't request they terms from France

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Kaiser Wilhelm must have been surprized about the close-related England with his own royal relatives declaring war at "him" - after all he was a son of Queen Victoria.

Grandson. Wilhelm II and George V were first cousins.

Which makes the First World War something of a family feud.

[Catfish]

Hello,
Sailor Steve you are certainly right with grandson.
Anyway he was early inclined to ships.



Greetings,
Catfish

[gord96]

crazy stuff. every interesting and mind boggeling at the same time

Originally Posted by 3Jane

As I understand it the ships at Toulon were scuttled as the Germans were arriving. Also, the Bristish shelled other elements of the French fleet to prevent them falling into German hands. But I'm not certain as to the sequence of events.

I read this too. I know the British knew when they were pushed into the sea that anything left was going into German hands. All the French boats they took out were about to become German boats. It was a smart move with Operation Sea Lion on the table.

[STEED]

All those French sailors killed by us, no wonder France was pi**ed at us, but what could have done? No choice in the matter it was war.

In the first place the KM had no say in the surrender terms that created Vichy and took France out of the war. Even in Germany war and peace were made at the political level and not by the military.

Secondly the French navy was widely scattered, with elements in French North Africa, Dakar, North America, Alexandria, Indo-China and the UK. The combat effective parts of the Fleet had been crippled by the RN at the battle of Mers el Kabr, 3 July 1940 which was after the French surrender. Other significant elements disarmed themselves and were laid up with French caretaker crews under British supervision. Still others got themselves interned in the US and were out of German reach.

Third I think that you might under estimate the ease in which foriegn warships can be integrated into a navy. Creating a combat effective warship is not just a matter of lighting off the boilers, doing a couple of turns around the harbour to see how she handles and then joining the war effort. Typically 12-18 months is common, all of the engines, weapons, ammunition, ship systems, fire control etc. would have to be replaced by domestic items (themselves in short supply) or learned from scratch. The KM was pretty small, subtracting leadership, sailors and shipwrights to get the French ships into service would probably effectively ended the U-Boat war. Resources that should have been working on submarines would have been syphoned off to refit surface ships of little value to the war effort. U-Boats were the only realistic strategic naval option open to Germany. Surface ships, no matter how cool, could never have won the war at sea for Hitler.

And lastly, I'll probably get flamed for this as well, but the French Navy does have a long and honourable history behind it even if it lacks the tradition of victory that the RN has. When Germany decided to seize the surviving French warships after occupying Vichy, many were scuttled by their crews. There is no reason to doubt that most ship captain's would have done the same in 1940.

Good Hunting