Feldgrau.net

Hubertus

During the questioning of the German crew after their capture, it was never directly stated that the Germans shot up Sydney's life rafts/boats but it was a line of questioning that was followed.

I believe that with the discovery of the wrecks of both ships and their distance from one another, lends greater credit to the German account of the final battle. The Germans observed a sudden flare up of the fires on Sydney around midnight that would possibly indicate a large secondary explosion on...

Andy:

I vote for Portugal to take the neutrallity road. They had just seen the string of stunning German blitzkreg victories and could expect to suffer the same fate. Britian hadn't been much of a help to her allies thus far.

For the purpose of this tread, we will assume Spain enters the war. I have reread The War at Sea and found Roskill's passage where he talks about the Atlantic islands. The British had only 2 transports that they kept in readiness. The Azores and Canary islands groups had a single cruiser patrolling ...

There is very little available on operation Goldeneye. It seems to be worked up before the war. It implies that Gib could be held. I DO NOT feel that would have been possible due to the overwhelming strength the Luftwaffe could have brought to the fight. The battles off Greece and Crete in April and...

Had Spain entered WW II in 1941, one part of the operation Felix plan was to reinforce the Carnary islands both by air and by sea. Naval operations staff plans had intended to have Scheer aid in the naval reinforcement and probably counter any British responce. ( FC on NA pg 145) The British had sev...

At the time Adm Carls proposed this, they were desperate. The surface units were looking for ANY additional help. GZ was months away from completion. The storch would have been used to provide an additional recce a/c for Scheer. It would have been only a fair weather option. (wind and sea state to f...

All landings of the Fl282 were on fantail. The Germans developed a novel method of doing this. The 282 would hover over the fantail. They would then have the 282 drop a rope from its' underside where a deck crew could attach it to a block and then warp the 282 down to the deck. They did this in reve...

Phylo- Grille was underway. It appeared that the Storch was approaching with about 5 to 10 mph speed differential. The problem with landing on Grille is wind vortexes generated by the ships superstructure. In the film clip, the storch was just off the stern of the ship when she encountered one of th...

The ship that a storch actually landed on was the air landing ship Grille after her landing deck modification. (I saw landing trials on the Dicovery Channel series Wings!) They had bungie cord arrester lines but they didn't use them in the clips I saw. I also saw a storch pitch left and crash in the...

In 1942 as the German major surface fleet units were being restricted into the Arctic waters, there was a growing movement to get more out of their embarked air units. Adm Carls spoke about landing a Fi 156 Storch on the deck of Admiral Scheer. My question to all is, was this ever tried and if so, w...

The information I have read just stated Tripitz's 196s attacked the attacking albacores without success. I have never heard of any extensions required for the launching of float planes in the Bismarck class ships. The cause of the ruptured airline to the catapult has only been guessed at. The case f...

The information I have read just stated Tripitz's 196s attacked the attacking albacores without success. I have never heard of any extensions required for the launching of float planes in the Bismarck class ships. The cause of the ruptured airline to the catapult has only been guessed at. The case f...

I would like to make a couple of responces to issues raised by several responders. First, as far as the AR196 being used in CAP role, Tirpitz used all six of her 196's in an attempt to repell the attack by British Albacore's in March 42. They were not successful but did break up the attack waves. Do...

Paul- You are so right to think about the greater use the Kreigsmarine could have gotten out of the AR196. I've got a couple extra facts for you and then will add my own thoughts. First of all, by 39 the AR196 was using the BMW 132k which was rated at 960hp. The wing cannons were only the mg ff and ...