Should Britain remain a 'Tier One' Military Power?

rustybin

Best case we'd have been a Nazi satellite / puppet state. And we'd have done unthinkable things to the minorities in our country.

EarthRod

At the time, the options available were not as limited as some would seem to make out.

For example: not declare war on Germany; not send an expeditionary force into France. Use the time to reorganise production and to recruit. During this time no bombing of the UK would have taken place and Hitler would be indecisive about invading England because our navy would have blown any invasion force out of the water.

We could have sat there as an island playing for time and gathering our forces and looking to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and (possibly) America to set up agreements should Germany decide to try and invade England.

That example is just one option of many.

You need to remember Hitler was more interested in invading Russia, the preparation to invade England could have been a ruse to divert attention.

Skull n Bones

FTFY.

The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha British-German royal family, now called Windsor, is very rarely brought up these days.

EarthRod

That has been discussed on the forum before. Old news.

rustybin

Had we not fulfilled our treaty obligations the Empire would have almost certainly crumbled and it would have been every man for himself. We absolutely had to declare war or all confidence in Britain would have been destroyed, not least at all in the USA where it was most crucial.

By declaring war we ensured Germany had to focus (albeit a phoney war in many respects) on multiple fronts - something they were not really capable of doing at the time.

In terms of recruiting and garnering sympathy abroad - The Blitz was the best thing the Govt could have hoped for.

Britain drew a line in the sand at a time when Hitler was quite literally 'getting away with mass murder'. It simply had to be done.

I'm not saying there weren't other options, but they almost certainly wouldn't have led to victory for the Allies.

Rasczak

Sorry but the above is a load of rubbish. The HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH class (QEC) offers a vastly enhanced helicopter capability over HMS OCEAN.  Some, but not all, relevant factors are:

1. HMS OCEAN was built to merchant shipping specifications, i.e. ultra cheap. This translates into:
a. It was very slow limiting its ability to sustain optimum/low turbulence courses for take-off (and thus impairing payloads of fuel and ammo).
b.  The ability of HMS OCEAN to absorb battle damage was virtually zero as it wasn't designed for it. QEC has been designed and built to military specifications, it even has little firetrucks that wiz round its internal compartments.
c. The defensive suite on QEC is a world apart (better) from HMS OCEAN meaning it can be operated in a higher threat environment more safely.

2. QEC was built for Tri-Service aircraft. It has the tanks, space and lift/hangar capacity for all types of UK helicopters and space for future drones and F35Bs. By contrast HMS OCEAN was very limited in what you could put where which severely limited operations.

3. QEC is fast whereas HMS OCEAN was slow making it much more likely QEC is actually going to be where you need it.

4. Any carrier in any taskforce is a High Value Unit (if not a Mission Essential Unit)*. The idea that HMS OCEAN could take a hit and it would be 'okay because its not a really big carrier' is absurd.

Where the QEC cannot compare to HMS OCEAN is for landing troops by boat. But as we have the ALBION class and BAY class that do that, this is a capability that hasn't been relevant for HMS OCEAN since 2010. And if the cutbacks mooted occur it may never be relevant again. Even then, given how many helicopters it can carry, QEC can still land troops ashore faster than HMS OCEAN could!

This is why nobody has mooted a replacement for HMS OCEAN.

* It is OT but readers may be interested to know that it will normally be the accompanying tanker that will be the MEU as, without that, all operations of all units grind to a halt whereas the accompanying warships are all more capable of resilience against attack.

IronGiant

I'm not sure why any of that makes sonic's post a load of rubbish, you're arguing that QE is a suitable/improved platform over Ocean, well fine...

Skull n Bones

I was commenting more on education in schools,  not these forums specific.

Rasczak

I am not sure I can explain it much more clearly?  The mooted statements were

1. "something like Ocean would have been good to get in close and send in helicopters". That is nonsense as, with the pressures on the defence budget as they are, we don't need to buy something that was infinitely worse at doing a task than something we already have.

2. "You can put helicopters on the QE class and send them in from that, but you either keep it out of reach as it's precious but the range over the country will be short, or move it closer and risk it". That is wrong for the reasons outlined.

Sonic67

We could have been starved out. We don't grow enough to feed ourselves. A long battle of the Atlantic to see how that would have turned out.