• The first stage of the forum upgrades has now been completed but they remain in a degraded state and are still being worked on. Normal posting/reading should now be possible.
    Please read this thread for more details.
    New user registrations are currently disabled.

Dunkirk

Status
Not open for further replies.
Lord Potts said:
Sorry I don't agree with you figures at all a few weeks later during the Battle of Britain between July and September 1940, the figures were 19 squadrons of Supermarine Spitfires (372 aircraft at peak on August 30) and 33 squadrons of Hawker Hurricanes (709 aircraft on August 30) . The average proportion of serviceable aircraft each morning of that battle was 37% of the Spitfires and 67% of Hurricanes .
The figures vary slightly but the official list of squadron types engaged in the Battle of Britain show the same picture (
You must be logged on to see external links

My point being that we had twice the number of Hurricanes than Spitfires at that stage of the war and accordingly you would have been more likely to have seen a Hurricane over Dunkirk than a Spitfire. I am not suggesting that there were no Spitfires over Dunkirk but film directors are more interested in fulfilling audience expectations than giving an accurate picture.
Click to expand...

It was a snapshot of one hour in the life of three planes, presumably from the same squadron. There were plenty of Spitfires over Dunkirk. How does this give an inaccurate picture?
 

Lord Potts said:
Sorry I don't agree with you figures at all a few weeks later during the Battle of Britain between July and September 1940, the figures were 19 squadrons of Supermarine Spitfires (372 aircraft at peak on August 30) and 33 squadrons of Hawker Hurricanes (709 aircraft on August 30) . The average proportion of serviceable aircraft each morning of that battle was 37% of the Spitfires and 67% of Hurricanes .
The figures vary slightly but the official list of squadron types engaged in the Battle of Britain show the same picture (
You must be logged on to see external links

My point being that we had twice the number of Hurricanes than Spitfires at that stage of the war and accordingly you would have been more likely to have seen a Hurricane over Dunkirk than a Spitfire. I am not suggesting that there were no Spitfires over Dunkirk but film directors are more interested in fulfilling audience expectations than giving an accurate picture.
Click to expand...

woah there mate - May/June 40 (the period in question bearing in mind the entire OP is about Dunkirk) is not the same as July/Sep 40 (the BoB)

I've already posted the figures for May 40 which are the only pertinent figures for a Dunkirk scenario and its 19 to 16 in the favour of the Spitfire

Immediately after Dunkirk / Norway the figure changes back in favour of the hurricane because there were 9 squadrons overseas at the time of Dunkirk which are recalled (for reforming and refitting) after the fall of France and the fall of Norway

The fact the that number of spitfire squadrons does'nt change from 19 in Jun to Sep is down to something else completely different (the slowdown of production at Supermarine in Southampton due to German bombing being a minor one, and the fuckup that was Nuffield at the Castle Bromwich factory being a major one)
 
Lord Potts said:
Sorry I don't agree with you figures at all a few weeks later during the Battle of Britain between July and September 1940, the figures were 19 squadrons of Supermarine Spitfires (372 aircraft at peak on August 30) and 33 squadrons of Hawker Hurricanes (709 aircraft on August 30) . The average proportion of serviceable aircraft each morning of that battle was 37% of the Spitfires and 67% of Hurricanes .
The figures vary slightly but the official list of squadron types engaged in the Battle of Britain show the same picture (
You must be logged on to see external links

My point being that we had twice the number of Hurricanes than Spitfires at that stage of the war and accordingly you would have been more likely to have seen a Hurricane over Dunkirk than a Spitfire. I am not suggesting that there were no Spitfires over Dunkirk but film directors are more interested in fulfilling audience expectations than giving an accurate picture.
Click to expand...

They only showed 3.
 
finally going to see this on wednesday cant wait being a WW2 supernerd and all that...i hope one day they make a film or a Mini TV series about the ox and bucks/Pegasus bridge
 
Flared Hicks said:
I love the way there's always someone on here who is an expert in whatever it is that is being discussed.

has there ever been a thread where the response has been a collective shrug of the shoulders?

You must be logged on to see media items
Click to expand...

or simply accept that someone might have a slightly different interpretation of facts and statistics.
 
Spennymackem1981 said:
finally going to see this on wednesday cant wait being a WW2 supernerd and all that...i hope one day they make a film or a Mini TV series about the ox and bucks/Pegasus bridge
Click to expand...


perhaps it could be part of a film, maybe like this one

You must be logged on to see media items

;-)
 
It has to be borne in mind that there are many more airworthy Spitfires than Hurricanes remaining and most of the Hurricanes are later Marks, not that that would really matter unless you were being really picky. At least they used actual aircraft as opposed to CGI for a lot of the scenes.
 
Spennymackem1981 said:
finally going to see this on wednesday cant wait being a WW2 supernerd and all that...i hope one day they make a film or a Mini TV series about the ox and bucks/Pegasus bridge
Click to expand...

Ambrose did set out to write something similar for the Ox and Bucks but unlike the Americans the British didn't keep these special units together and spread them back to the main parts of the army - think that might be in Peagus Bridge = would probably make a good two-parter but perhaps not enough for a mini series.
 
Parkmaverick said:
Ambrose did set out to write something similar for the Ox and Bucks but unlike the Americans the British didn't keep these special units together and spread them back to the main parts of the army - think that might be in Peagus Bridge = would probably make a good two-parter but perhaps not enough for a mini series.
Click to expand...


yeah total waste of their expertise, especially with operation market garden around the corner an operation based around taking bridges
 
Spennymackem1981 said:
yeah total waste of their expertise, especially with operation market garden around the corner an operation based around taking bridges
Click to expand...
I thought the operation to take the Bridges was a success, the lack of support from ground troops and a lack of intelligence on German strength in the area was the problem was it not
 
Billy Fish said:
I thought the operation to take the Bridges was a success, the lack of support from ground troops and a lack of intelligence on German strength in the area was the problem was it not
Click to expand...


Yeah definatly but what i was getting at tho id that particular unit of the ox and bucks was specifically trained for high speed bridge capture...they should of been kept for that
 
Spennymackem1981 said:
Yeah definatly but what i was getting at tho id that particular unit of the ox and bucks was specifically trained for high speed bridge capture...they should of been kept for that
Click to expand...

only if you use hindsight and know that 3 months after D-Day you'll be attempting to seize the Rhine bridges in Holland (via high-speed capture)

In the original D-Day breakout plans they expected to be only somewhere west of Paris by D-Day+90

perhaps by feeding these special units back into the regulars they helped speed up the rate of advance which got them into a position where they needed them again as a special unit??
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top