About HMS Campbleltown, Jeremy Clarkson of
Top Gear did a superb doc on the St Nazaire operation,
The Greatest Raid .
He later said it's the best piece he's ever done, which it is.
Informed and passionate, with great contributions from veterans, though more restrained here, Clarkson still delivers some great lines, such as describing what the Commando's would do ashore on the raid,
shooting anything that moved and blowing up anything that didn't
A few on You-Tube have this doc, just putting
The Greatest Raid in the search box should suffice.
One You-Tube channel, GDHOUSTON, has literally 1000's of WW2 docs, including another about the St.Nazaire raid which turns out to be very complementary to Clarkson's.
'Operation Chariot' they called it, but the more modern football chant of
Let's go f******* mental also describes it rather well.
Make a great film.
I recall another doc on
TV once, the now old Russian vets, jackets full of (genuine) medals, might not have spoken English, but they knew 'Mac Truck' and 'jeeps' usually with a broad smile.
In 1941/42, the Hurricanes would have been a useful stop gap, considering how decimated the Red Air Force was early on (all those German aces with 100's of kills).
Better yet, they made use of the P-39's presumably playing to it's strengths, in ground attack, at least until all those Stormoviks started arriving.
On 'Sealion', as I mentioned before, by Sep/Oct 1940 while nowhere near up to strength, the army was in a much better shape compared to in June/July, add in the defences too.
The invasion fleet, would have been shallow draft river barges, towed at night, max speed 2 knots, assuming a mill pond like sea state.
(Remember that D-Day, with all it's specialised amphibious kit, was delayed 24 hrs due to the weather).
The
RN would have steamed in, for their most important mission since the Spanish Armada.
The Luftwaffe, in daylight against ships at harbour, failed to stop the Dunkirk invasion, I'd suspect they'd have even less success against a fleet steaming at speed in the dark.
Sure, mines and E-Boats might have scored hits, (subs would be very restricted in the Channel), but the
RN had
MBT's too.
This is the navy that the following year, would suffer heavy losses while evacuating ground forces from Crete, even the troops said they should give it up.
Admiral Cunningham replied
It takes 3 years to build a ship, 300 to build a tradition, the evacuation will continue .
And they were not defending the homeland itself there.
Imagine what 15 and 16 inch gun salvos would do amongst all those barges, that not very choppy waters could flood.
Or even 6 and 8 inch shells.
Now imagine a bunch of
RN Destroyers getting amongst them, Narvik style.
(The Norway operation was of course a serious failure, even so, the German Navy suffered bad losses there too, which would make any support of Operation Sealion even more problematic).
Later, some Luftwaffe Air Fleets would be proficient at anti shipping, but they were not in place in France in 1940.
Come daybreak, the RAF would appear.
(Assuming Fighter Commands 11 Group in London/SE England had indeed taking a heavy enough beating for Hitler to try the invasion).
But 12 Group, held in reverse in the Midlands, would deploy the previous night then join the fray.
Along with anything that could carry a bomb.