Originally posted by Von Rom
To quote Blair:
". . . the U-boat peril in World War II was and has been vastly overblown."
My evidence was to show that it was not over blown.
Also, many on this board said that Britain was not in danger of being defeated. My "extra" evidence showed otherwise.
I guess i need reading glasses because i do not see this evidence. I see a bunch of opinions, negative reviews on Blair and dire predictions and forcasts. I need not repeat anymore what i've been asking you for.
Ah, yes you have Blair. Where would we be without Blair. You hang onto his book as though it is the Holy Grail. LOL
His book is full of faults, no less being it contains no footnotes so we cannot check his data. Further, his pro-American bias is everywhere in the book. The British and Germans are roundly criticized, but he has almost 300 pages to devote to defending King's abysmal lax attitude regarding east coast convoy protection.
Tsk tsk my friend. I do not consider Blair's book a holy grail. That is my whole point. I've listened, and listened and listened to your continued pointings towards what are perceived as his "faults" yet in the end you can provide no counter-data regarding the economic situation nor can your critics refute Blair's findings that most cargo ships made it to their destinations. I am only asking what any "Blair fan" would, who might use the source to run away and say that the uboats were nothing at all. I dont think the uboats were nothing, but i have yet to see any data that refutes Blair's thesis that the UBoats never came close to acheiving strategic success.
Yes, he criticises the British and Germans, yes he devotes pages to exonerate the Americans....yes he likes King. I've pointed out that he does the same thing to the American silent service in his earlier book and levels harsh critisim on his own Silent Service. So maybe he's just a hard taskmaster when it comes to sub ops. I know the raw tonnage figures, you've repeated them over and over. I am only interested in the state of Britian's lifeline and the uboat objectives. All you've been able to do here is talk about lack of footnotes (there are some in the book) and that his "data" cant be checked. Well that might be true given how many years he spent pouring over the documents and records in London and Washington. Last i checked, noone faults Blair for his research, only his writing methods from the thumbs down reviews you've transcribed.
It is difficult ultimately to accept Blair's claim that the loss of 596 merchant ships of 3.5 million tons to enemy action between September 1942 and March 1943 was not a crisis simply because most ships in convoy arrived safely and Allied shipbuilding replaced those lost.
Sigh. Well here we are back in 1942 after the USA entered the war. So you conceede then Britian's lifeline was hardly severed before American entry into the war? Define "Crisis", i could see a crisis in leadership when someone has to explain why so many American ships got sunk when perhaps the "tools" were available and that it might have been prevented, but this 'crisis' does not automatically evolve into a crippling blow to the Allies. 3.1 million tons of shipping is alot. 30million tons total shipping is alot more. Replacement of 85 - 90% of that lost shipping same year counts alot too.
In order to win the tonnage war, the Allies had to divert an extraordinary amount of resources away from the production of tanks, landing craft, aircraft and other armaments necessary for the invasion of Europe toward the production of merchant ships and escorts.
No argument here. Blair agrees. other sources agree. we all agree. However this is a moot point as well. The Allies had to divert resources, but they still won. Neither does this facet translate into a crippling blow. It was not Doneitz's goal. His goal was maritime defeat of the enemy and Blair's thesis is not about resource divertion, its about how close the Uboats came to acheiving strategic victory.
Indeed, the argument that the tonnage war was a misguided strategy from the outset pre-supposes both the entry of the United States into the war and the presence of a viable alternative to it for Germany.
Not if Blair's info on Britian is correct. I might not use the term 'misguided' myself as it does smack of hindsight, unless one considers Germany's technological challenges in facing this new uboot war, perhaps a better term is "doomed" for it would have required more changes than meerly producing a few more boats and the world economy was different from the last war.
"Arms waving in the air?" Please.
Winston Churchill, as the leader of Great Britain, was briefed daily on all activities on air, land and sea. He had a very clear idea of what was happening. The information was so bad, he eventually stopped giving loss figures to Parliament, because they were so depressing.
Out of the HUNDREDS of historians who have written about the Battle of the Atlantic, ONLY Blair makes the contention that the U-boat war was not that serious. LOL
Well you can laugh. Me, i prefer to see the data. I've posted numbers from Blair's book. All you've posted is raw tonnage which is yes, well known, and some of Churchill's quotes on his fears. Blair, love or hate his writing style, researched all the convoy and uboat patrols and compared them with economic data for the USA and Britian at the time. I've asked you repeatedly over and over to show the data that backs the negative commentary you've gone to pains to post about the author. To this date you have not.
I guess all these other historians are flighty individuals running around waving their hands in the air whenever the word "U-boat" is mentioned.
I have no idea who "all these other historians are" and have no need to critisize their work. When all I see are quotes from Churchill and the daily paper of the time talking grim about the Uboat war which i never said was anything less than a struggle for life, When all i see are comments that the Uboat war was serious and that heavy losses were reported in raw tonnage yep, the description fits. None of these trappings indicates that Britian's lifeline was in mortal danager of being severed. If Blair is the first author to truely attempt to delve into the real effects of this popular subject, that does not automatically make him wrong. What would make him wrong is equivilent data that shows that Britian was teetering on the edge of destruction and that most of her loaded ships were being sunk before reaching harbor. But that appears to have not happened.
To paraphrase Tweedy Bird: "I did, I did. I did taw a U-boat."
I'd like to see a Uboat someday.
No one said the British were starving, even though rationing was instituted, and everyone had to grow gardens. Even so, just three weeks interruption of the convoy system would have resulted in dire shortages.
Ok, you admit they wern't starving. It also appears their economy wasn't grinding down either. As for "interruption" of the convoy system. It never happened during the war. According to the data, it never came close to happening. I think it would take a hell lot more than a few more boats to create that total or near total embargo.
The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in a broadcast on 27th April 1941, made clear that the most important theatre of the war for Britain lay in the Atlantic:
"Still, when you think how easy it is to sink ships at sea and how hard it is to build and protect them, when you remember we never have less than 2,000 ships afloat and 300 to 400 in the danger areas, when you think of the great armies we maintain...and the world-wide traffic we have to carry, can you wonder that it is the Battle of the Atlantic which holds the first place in the thoughts of those upon whom rests the responsibility for procuring the victory?"
Nice speech. Again all this proves is that Churchill's first obsession was the Uboat. No doubt he was right to focus on the threat. When your an island nation dependant on maritime trade, i think that produces a far different perception of priorities vs say, a continental power that if push came to shove, could survive having half it's merchant fleet shot out from under it. Who knows, maybe thats why King downplayed the warnings from the British which helped make DRUMBEAT a reality. Had Britian not focused on the threat.....maybe they would have lost their lifeline. But they did focus on it....obscessed on it might be the better word....and it appears they never came close to losing it.
And while convoying did undoubtedly reduce sinkings and save lives, the introduction of the convoy system led to a temporary but critical one-third reduction in the quantity of imports reaching Britain, a fact which caused Churchill much concern.
In addition to a one-third reduction in imports, there was also the 2,500 ships that had been sunk in the first two years of the war.
Much of which was quickly replaced.....meanwhile, Britian's economy made the adjustments, reduced it's need for imports and chugged on, as did the British people. Nothing new here......raw tonnage #'s Got em....thanks.
War is waged by much more than having a few carrots and potatoes to eat. It requires prodigious amounts of oil, metals, parts, tanks, aircraft, ships, factories, money etc, etc.
And every ship sunk, places the recipient in a far worse situation.
That is the oft held contention, if one assumes that each ship sunk was loaded. They were not. Britian continued to produce the tanks, parts, aircraft etc etc etc. When losses from the land battles exceeded that production they turned to the USA for help.
In early 1941, not only was Britain running out of gold and cash (in fact it couldn't even pay the US for any of the armaments it was building), but the ships the USA was building would only meet half of Britain's shipping requirements due to losses sustained (page 692, Gilbert's "Churchill").
Britian was running out of gold not meerly because of uboat losses, never rich to begin with after WWI gutted the treasury, the land based losses and the BoB and the damage/costs it ensued would all have combined to create a money starved government.
It was a just a figure to illustrate my point. Relax. [/B]
I'm always relaxed
well your point seemed to be indicating that only a "handful" of uboats created a catastrophe when in reality it was rather more than that. Perception is a powerful tool and can readily distort.
