Someone redpill me on the effectiveness of the British during WWII. Cause I’m always underwhelmed when I look at them.
>Goofy obsolescent helmets
>Slow af Tanks
>Montgomery looking like a smug pompous prick
>Taking the easiest beaches on Normandy
>Taking the farthest (least defended) bridge on market garden, and using their slow af armored division to secure the bridges (reason why the operation failed). Whole operation was Montgomery’s ego brainchild.
>Endless examples of delayed operations due to Tea breaks
It’s kinda contemptible desu.

>>63901317 (OP)
>Perfidious Albion
I rest my case.

>>63901317 (OP)
They were just trying to hold out long enough to drag America into the war to save their pale pimply asses yet again

>>63901317 (OP)
Have tried looking at stuff that happened in the first 4 years of the war or outside of Northern France?

>>63901317 (OP)
Some of them were batshit crazy and would not die no matter how hard you tried:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Carton_de_Wiart

the dowding system was lit

>>63901336
>Born 5 May 1880 Brussels, Belgium

It's like with all the stories about the "badass Canadians" during WW1 & WW2, they were all french, every time

>>63901317 (OP)
You'd fail to beach without them.

>>63901346
When you fight 5 wars losing half your body for England and get Knighted then get a Sabaton song about it you are English, not fake English like leaf trolls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4vj_WB5w_k

>>63901353
Demonstrably false, but yeah, they would not have even been able to attempt their candy ass beach without the USA.

>>63901331
Yeah, like Singapore or the entire asiatic squadron getting completely ass pounded?

Or do you mean forcing the Australians to get killed in the desert by certified retard Montgomery and then telling Australia lmao sorry we won't even try to defend you, no refunds.

Was funny when they made that hit song complaining about how literally all their wives were turbo cucking them with Americans on an industrial scale though

>>63901317 (OP)
>Goofy obsolescent helmets
brodie helmet worked just fine
there are only so many ways to make a steel helmet

>Slow af Tanks
thats the churchill, because they were intended to support infantry
they used the M4 sherman and the cromwell as cruiser tanks, both of decent speed and the latter actually really fast
the centurion didnt arrive in time for combat, but it was nonetheless both heavily armored and mobile

>Taking the easiest beaches on Normandy
germans actually regarded the british as the larger threat, so german panzer reserves were deployed against the british
this is why the the americans didnt fight many tiger 1s in NW europe, mostly tiger 2s, most of the first on scene were used against the british
which actually ended poorly for the germans, because the US didnt have 76mm guns yet but the british already had the 17pdr armed firefly

>>63901554
the british actually scored the first land victory against the axis, with the defeat of the italians in the east africa campaign

british also fought half the north africa campaign by themselves (with some commonwealth troops)
they won both battles of el alamein
they knew that once the americans arrived, their greater number would dominate the political aspect of the war, which was a contributor to the second battle of el alamein
they wanted a strong solo victory before it inevitably became a US dominated war
the british also carried much of the heavy fighting in the first weeks even after the americans arrived, as the US was still inexperienced and poorly trained at this time

>>63901554
>Singapore
Was impossible to defend without the Navy
There's hundreds of miles of coast
>entire
Lol no
>forcing the Australians to get killed in the desert
Actually the Australians got an express ticket out because they kept bitching about Gallipolli 2.0
Growing up I was fed this myth as well. Then I did some independent reading and realised that it was all bull. Crete, North Africa - Australians were given priority evac

>>63901317 (OP)
Fuck off, troll

>>63901317 (OP)
They were pretty good at that code breaking and intel gathering shit

>>63901331
>British lose Singapore when having numerical superiority and a near impenetrable defensive position
More officers should have taken their own lives when they surrendered after such a humiliating defeat.

>>63901317 (OP)
>>63901628
>Singapore
>Was impossible to defend without the Navy
they had the largest navy in the world when the war started

>>63901317 (OP)
They were so effective that it hurts (it hurts naziboos in particular).
They won the war with 1/16 of the casualties they suffered during WW1.

>>63901317 (OP)
Pretty effective riflemen with solid infantry tactics. They didn’t have the industrial base to fight a 1940s land war like the Soviets and Germans did. America was necessary for them to consider any escalation. They probably would have just bullied the Italians by invading strategically useless Mediterranean islands and hunted U-boats until bankruptcy Without American support.

>>63902023
>Pretty effective riflemen with solid infantry tactics
they had the most unique rifleman organization

no MMGs as standard in rifle companies, the vickers guns were held in divisional machine gun regiments
base of fire came entirely from squad level machine guns, bren guns was 90% of a companies firepower, and the rifles could have been replaced with pitchforks for all the cared
the british relied more on the bren gun than the germans did on the MG42/34, which is crazy when you consider the bren is still mag loaded
the bren guns were also commanded by the
they also operated 4 companies per battalion instead of the usual 3
and did not have any specialized heavy weapons units in the company, the PIATS were held with HQ and just assigned to whoever needed it and the mortar team, just a single one, was directly under HQ

>>63901317 (OP)
So you're either retarded, or an unimaginative troll. Whatcha sliding moshe?

>>63901871
All deployed to areas that mattered. The risk of Japan (literally who?) taking a city that most people in Britain/Europe had never heard of wasn't something that was worth the preemptive deployment of naval assets, especially not when the North Sea, Channel, Med, and Atlantic theatre were definitely important and happening.

Also, while I'm here
>Completely buck-broke the Luftwaffe, with consequences that dominated the flow of the war after that point.
>ROFLstomped the Kriegsmarine to the point where it was reduced to just a few inconsequential ships that were too scared to even think about leaving the Baltic
>Despite being the smallest allied country still carried half the western front ground war
>Basically invented modern cryptography and the computer, utterly dominating the information and disinformation side of the war (also inventing modern electronics)
>British Intelligence got German orders before the German officers the orders had been sent to did
>The RAF basically de-industrialised Germany
>Without Britain the war in the west would have been over by 22nd of June 1940, and the USSR/Iron Curtain would have gotten as far west as Lisbon

>>63901871
Given the Brits and Americans kept to the pre war naval treaties, their navies were pretty much comparable in size (Royal Navy had halved it's tonnage since 1914), but the Brits still had a global empire to patrol, so we're spread more thinly.

>>63902056
on that bit with the mortars, 1 mortar per platoon is actually more commonplace than 1 mortar section (1-3 mortars) per company

overall number of mortars in a battalion was about 26
they were all of the rather anemic 2-inch variety, with 6x 3-inch mortars at the dedicated company mortar platoon, but thats compensated for by how many there are

>>63901317 (OP)
>Goofy obsolescent helmets


this is the only one that matters, Brit battles would be in more movies if you guys didn't look so fucking goofy doing it. Shit helmets, Shit web gear, shit weapons, Shit boots.

>>63901336
>he was widely believed to be an illegitimate son of King Leopold II of the Belgians

huh

>Another thread whining about Britain
Funny the kind of things that get posted at the same time as these.

>>63902608
I read the thread, there seems to be a lot of praise for the British in it. Are you retarded anon-kun?

>>63901317 (OP)
>taking the easiest beaches in Normandy
Jig Sector on Gold Beach was such a clusterfuck I honestly don't even know where to begin

>>63901317 (OP)
they fought a hard war and gave a good accounting trough all of it.
their reputation is unjustly tarnished just like the French due to the fall of France.
That they had to contend with having a smaller force, less heavy equipment, not having fought a mechanized war before and a strategic plan that while sound was none the less turned on them.
gets ignored because "hur dur lost the continent". That they where going up against Nazi Germany at it's best just doesn't register.

>>63901317 (OP)
The britbongs didn’t get easier beaches. The difference was that they knew what didn’t work after the Dieppe Raid and built specialized equipment to overcome the obstacles.
The burgers refused to use the Hobart Funnies, failed to land on the correct spot on Omaha beach and got torn to shit because of it.

>>63901745
The position they held in Singapore was fundamentally fucked
High command botched it extremely badly but they were never going to hold

>>63902751
nobody fought a mechanized war before

>>63902774
Remember that omaha was one of the few sectors occupied by actual high quality german troops and not random slav and georgian conscripts. The aerial recon also failed to notice their artillery positions so they also got to keep all their artillery and use it for a while. Barely any of the tanks landed because cowardy naval officers launched them way too far out in already quite rough water. Omaha was a disaster and shouldnt have happpened the way it did and people should stop taking pride in the fact we lost more people there, its like when rusniggers brag about 26 gorillion deaths.

>>63902829
>Omaha was a disaster and shouldnt have happpened the way it did and people should stop taking pride in the fact we lost more people there
people dont take pride in the casualties
they take pride in the fact that, despite everything going wrong, the soldiers and the commanders were capable of adapting very quickly to the situation and turning it into a victory through improvisation and sheer determination

>>63901317 (OP)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Navy_during_the_Second_World_War
The RN had their FUBAR not even in worst nightmare tier disaster when France Fell, Italy joined and then the IJN attacked and managed to stay afloat.

>>63901328
The computer wouldn't exist for decades if they didn't dump modern-day billions into cracking the enigma. no computer from britain, and no rocket scientists from germany = no USA flag on moon in the 60s

>>63903084
Meant to tag OP
>>63901328

>>63903084

cope britcuck
turing is meme
von neumann invented the computer and he had funding from USA

>>63902818
the Germans had in Poland

>>63902564
>Brit battles would be in more movies if Americans weren't all such historically illiterate hillbillies
FTFY

>>63903493
Isn't it time for your tea? Don't forget the crumpets and anti depression medication.

>>63903534
>I am an illiterate hillbilly who knows absolutely nothing, and I'm butthurt about it
FTFY

>>63902751
>Nazi Germany at it's best
They had a smaller army than France, let alone France and UK combined. Not much of a feat to get destroyed by the underdog. And in the El Alamein battles the brits had vastly superior numbers too, and they still couldnt win the first one. Their land victories simply attrited germans into a defeat while suffering more casualties than the germans. Woohoo.

>>63903578
What? I can't read that, what does it say?!

>>63903642
Sounds about right.

If you want to lay the blame of some of their odd decisions you have to look at Montgomery as a general and the British political realities.
The British knew they could not sustain manpower losses like everyone else if they hoped to come out on top. They also knew they had to secure major victories absent of US forces to keep their image and provide a stronger position post war at the bargaining table.
With that in mind look at Operation Goodwood. Montgomery pulled some bullshit talking up how it was going to be a huge win for the Allies and a complete breakthrough. Instead Montgomery quietly changed objectives, didn't inform others, failed to cover flanks and ultimately got bogged down in Caen which everyone likes the pretend was some British big brained move to affix the Germans while the Americans conducted Operation Cobra. If they weren't so fixated on the idea of a British conservation of man power, they would have rushed Caen and had ended it sooner before it became a slog. If they weren't so fixated with the idea of a British victory, they would have coordinated with the US better and bypassed Caen for the time being. Instead we got minimal casualties and a British win at the cost of fucking over the big picture

>>63903619
>Their land victories simply attrited germans into a defeat while suffering more casualties than the germans
germans suffered about 17,000 losses total in the first battle of el alamein, british 13,000
but in the second battle, its not even close, british suffer 13,000 total losses and the germans at least 25,000 killed and wounded only

>>63902564
Agreed. Goofy goobers with with bad teeth and a weird fixation for grass water.

>>63903716
I haven't slept in 30 hours, I misread a bit. I bet half the german losses were italian though so EH.

>>63903726
Mogged hard

>>63903534
>needing pills to cope with your miserable life
Just amerimutt things

>>63903084
>no computer from britain, and no rocket scientists from germany = no USA flag on moon in the 60s
Not just that but...

>>63903084
bullshit Alonzo Church already formalized everything Turing did before Turing and ENIAC was built independently

>>63904226
>pills
In England they use scotch to treat depression, if they can afford it

>>63901871
Which they had to split between 4 Oceans and the Mediterranean. Unironically the biggest argument in favor of the German surface fleet complete with capital ships is the fact that it forced the Royal Navy to spread themselves thin.

>>63904389
So why isn't there an English flag on the moon???

>We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

>Russians get BTFOd in Sumy
>New sneaky boi drone attack at Marinovka with 4 confirmed (so far) SU-34 destroyed
>Suddenly a divide and conquer thread pops up with a 100% American OP to try and stir up shit
Really makes me think

>>63904583
Don't look up where Americans got their flag from.

>>63904574
Historically we've used gin. And unlike you, we can afford basic consumer goods.

>>63902564
C'mon, laddo, 'Commandos Strike at Dawn' and 'Went the Day Well?' are great flicks.

>>63901871
"largest" is one of those words that people use when they don't want to actually quantify the difference
100 is still larger than 99, but is that really a significant advantage?

the main problem is that the French were knocked out in a matter of weeks. that threw all prewar computations completely off, on land, air and sea. as a result, vast resources had to be spent on the Army and Air Force, and the "largest navy in the world" spent two years fighting off both the Kriegsmarine and the Regia Marina single-handed, no thanks to the French. it's preposterous to add the Japanese to that.

and the Axis navies were no slouch either. each Uboat might be reckoned nearly the equivalent of a destroyer, and in some ways were more fiddly to catch. and the Italians built large numbers of, essentially, coastal destroyers as well. that all adds up.

>>63904594
Ziggers get blown up every day its nothing new, you schizos always say this in every thread with a topic you dont like or that isnt the ukraine war.

>>63903726
>gaiters
>upward pointing chevrons
That's no Brit, that's an American.

>>63901317 (OP)
There were 7 armoured Divisions (German ones) at Normandy. We faced 6 of them including the most elite one in the German army. We broke the back of Rommel at el Alamein and we're the fuck ups behind kaserin pass. Whilst we came within pissing distance (literally) of capturing a bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem in September. You fuck wits couldn't take a single small city (achen). It was British ships and brains that one that battle of the Atlantic as well. I could go on. But your tiny American Brain would collapse.

>>63905628
*And weren't the fuck ups who mastermind kaserin

>>63901581
>the defeat of the Italians
Impressive

>>63901628
>Singapore
>Was impossible to defend without the Navy
>There's hundreds of miles of coast

Good thing they didn't use the coast

>>63902774
The specialized funnies would've sank in the channel just like the DDs did

>>63901331
HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse sunk by japs due to lack of air cover in 1941.
North Africa was a poor showing by bongs who were both too timid in defense and then did repeated counter attacks into the exact same killzone day after day.

>>63901572
>brodie helmet worked just fine
>there are only so many ways to make a steel helmet
The Brodie helmet is one of the incorrect ways, it was only better in the static trench warfare of WWI and was not suited for WWII. Rounded helmets are simply better against a more diverse range of threat profiles. It's no wonder why the WWI Stahlhelm saw shit tons of interwar use and derivative/influenced designs across Europe, or why the M1 persisted in US service for most of the century while the British helmets did not.
Also, the MkIII/IV turtle helmet was also bad and only constituted a real improvement because it replaced the MkII Brodie and did the same thing but better. Worst part is that they could have standardized the HSAT or RAC helmets, which were already in production and widespread use.

>>63902688
>there seems to be a lot of praise for the British in it.
...which is outnumbered by criticism, and the main theme of the thread, based on the OP is "lol bongs suck"
Are you retarded, anon-kun?

The British lost a lot by counterattacking to defend Tobruk.
Rommel was brilliant at mobile warfare.

>>63905005
Most comparisons are going to be arbitrary or questionable. Not to question how other parts of the empire factor into doing it single-handedly, US was repairing ships and patrolling along the Americas in early 1941. France surrendered mid 1940.

>>63901628
Found the salty seething bong. Don't you have a little sister to give to a muzzie gang?

>>63902092
>Despite being the smallest allied country still carried half the western front ground war
No.
>The RAF basically de-industrialised Germany
No.
>Without Britain the war in the west would have been over by 22nd of June 1940, and the USSR/Iron Curtain would have gotten as far west as Lisbon
No.

>>63905628
>It was British ships and brains that one that battle of the Atlantic as well. I could go on. But your tiny American Brain would collapse
>one

>>63905836
I think it's all in appropriate amounts

Hello? Is this >>>/bant/ ?

>>63902092
>Completely buck-broke the Luftwaffe, with consequences that dominated the flow of the war after that point.
>>ROFLstomped the Kriegsmarine to the point where it was reduced to just a few inconsequential ships that were too scared to even think about leaving the Baltic
>>Despite being the smallest allied country still carried half the western front ground war
>>Basically invented modern cryptography and the computer, utterly dominating the information and disinformation side of the war (also inventing modern electronics)
>>British Intelligence got German orders before the German officers the orders had been sent to did
>>The RAF basically de-industrialised Germany
>>Without Britain the war in the west would have been over by 22nd of June 1940, and the USSR/Iron Curtain would have gotten as far west as Lisbon
Triggered.

>>63901317 (OP)
But US was the one who almost lost WWII in the european theatre because the pussies refuse to fight unless they have completely overwhelming superiority.

>>63901317 (OP)
Okay but the SAS and the Royal Air Force were kino during the war so that makes up for everything else the Brits did wrong

>>63906224
>>63906888

>>63907522
British governments are traditionally about as useful as Trump except that American leaders like to have a war to write about. Hopefully someone will be alive to write about his war.

>>63906888
>>>ROFLstomped the Kriegsmarine to the point where it was reduced to just a few inconsequential ships that were too scared to even think about leaving the Baltic
And yet the Kriegsmarine dabbed on them while sailing past on the Channel

>>63907538
>It was real in my imagination.jpg

- Britain as a state was and is retarded.
- British military leadership has often been poor, sometimes there are good leader and rarely there are great one. This is true for a lot of countries but the UK is probably on the bottom end of average in this area.
- The military (morale, discipline, training) was pretty good
- The countries of the UK produced soldiers of similar quality to other comparable western nations (Rarely are there example of them being shit in and of themselves, usually it is due to poor leadership, logistics and equipment)
- The UK entered the war at the start of it, and in a terrible position militarily. As an island they had an advantage in natural defense but they still lasted the entire war and fought back.
- Their shit was typically very outdated
- The economic depressions had fucked over the urban/suburban working classes, typical fighting age men had been brought up on a poor diet of bread and beef-dripping. Their physical health was noticeably poorer than their rural, and colonial, counterparts.
- The above combines with the fact the public was somewhat war averse compared to the Germans and Japanese they were fighting, where the fighting age males had basically been bred for it with militaristic and authoritarian indoctrination and quasi-military training resulting in something like a 'warrior culture'.

I would point to Operation Thursday and the 77th Brigade in particular as an example of the Bong military at its best in WW2 (competent leadership, excellent men, average equipment, American/allied help, strategically middling achievements, extreme hardassery). For instance if you look at Mogaung in context it's one of the coolest and most impressive 'soldier's battles' of the Allied WW2 catalog.

>>63907709
>Britain as a state was and is retarded.
This is true and their main problem to this day. When everyone was rearming at an alarming rate they were actively disarming their forces.
Think as late as 1936 they were completely destroying stocks of reserve weapons which granted a lot of it was from WW1 but still imagine what their position would have been if they had sizeable reserves of SMLE MK III's and .303 ammo in 1940?

The UK really was thinking "If we set an example then surely everyone else will follow?" and all that happened was everyone took advantage of their naivety. Probably were still in mindset that if the dreadnought arms race didn't work to stop WW1 then it wouldn't work again when in reality a UK going full "Fuck around and find out!" mode flexing its economic output would have actually dissuaded aggression or at least delayed WW2 till the Allies were in a much stronger position, well in excess of the Axis.

The British can be summed up as their beliefs are "it's not enough that I succeed, others must fail" they are pigeon holed into talking a big game and lying about their greatness while trying to diminish their contemporaries that excell and surpass them.

Is OP just slow bumping his own thread so it won't die and instead linger as long as possible.

>>63901317 (OP)
>It’s kinda contemptible desu.
consider why the British entered the war in the first place, and you'll find the answers you seek

>>63908055
Peace in our time?

>>63907773
>imagine what their position would have been if they had sizeable reserves of SMLE MK III's and .303 ammo in 1940?
Wow some rifles, big change to the war

>>63906224
yes.
yes.
yes.

>>63908099

>>63901745
Wasn't exactly a fun time in the Jap POW camps

>>63901317 (OP)
The germans ferried out of Sicily in broad daylight when the RAF would have their tea breaks. They were slow and predictable, but fought pretty well besides that.

>>63901331
You mean like Churchill forcing the Norway invasion, brits getting raped and Churchill then blaming Chamberlain for it?
>>63901360
Belgium isn't a real country but that nigger's not English.

>>63901581
>british also fought half the north africa campaign by themselves
And got raped repeatedly despite having every advantage imaginable.

>>63908052
Yes.

>>63901317 (OP)
>Someone redpill me on the effectiveness of the British during WWII
Two words - Operation Neptune

>>63901317 (OP)

They didn't surrender in '40. That takes some balls. Also they sunk the French fleet after the frogs surrendered despite their assurances.

They also wrecked the Italians and despite Rommel being a menace they did manage to stop him.

They decisively defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. They had the worlds best international intelligence and covert ops network while the US had barely figured out what a spy agency was.

They became the de-facto guardians of the remnants of European democracy as the host of governments in exile.

They had enormous artillery concentrations in their infantry divisions, and extremely good engineer and support battalions. They had extremely aggressive and confident fighting captains and Admirals at sea, many times were British land forces rescued by daring Royal Navy operations.

Saboteurs, insurgents, militias and commando raids were rife in Europe. The first true special forces the SAS were pioneered by them, drawing on the vast experience and different fighting cultures of their vast empire. From south African Boers to Canadian woodsmen and east Asian jungle tribes they were able to put together some real mad lads to do unorthodox missions.

Their tanks were never particularly good until the Comet but they didn't have the resources to put that into service before the war was basically over. They couldn't produce vast quantities of tanks like the Sherman, which was the best main battle tank of the war without doubt but had to rely on lend-lease.

All in all their priority was to win this bloody war but without getting a million young men killed again like in 1914-18.

>>63902564
>Shit helmets, Shit web gear, shit weapons, Shit boots.
What about any of it is true? You don't sound like you know anything about WW2 gear

>>63906897
At what point was the US in danger of losing the war in Europe?

>>63901317 (OP)
>Goofy obsolescent helmets
True, good at stopping the sun though
>Slow af Tanks
all nations used slow infantry tanks at the beginning of ww2
>Montgomery looking like a smug pompous prick
true
>Taking the easiest beaches on Normandy
untrue, the americans fucked up their landings.
>Taking the farthest (least defended) bridge on market garden, and using their slow af armored division to secure the bridges (reason why the operation failed). Whole operation was Montgomery’s ego brainchild.
maybe true
>Endless examples of delayed operations due to Tea breaks
true

>>63901317 (OP)
They did have one good general albeit

>>63901317 (OP)
same as always, incredibly brave and effective soldiers and absolutely shit leadership

>>63901581
Only due to logistics. British trend pretty hard to let the Germans win.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNSNgGzaledjvQKDHORAPuJdug2sY4lrL

>>63901628
They could have tried, but thats not a British specific issue. Look at MacArthers Philippines fuck up.

>>63903084
This is retarded, there were computer systems in radar and warships before they cracked the enigma

Bunch of salty indians here

>>63906888
Nigger your planes, tanks, and destroyers for all your theaters came from American industry. Your island would have starved without America. You would have lost India and Australia to the Japs without America. You would have never been able to invade Europe without Americans. Don't act like an ungrateful Soviet here. You were a great ally but don't act all high and mighty.

>>63901346
>they were all french
50% of the Canadian Expeditionary Force was British-born. In fact it wasn't until 1918 that Canadian-born recruits made up half of the wartime total of all "Canadian" soldiers; for most of the war emigres had made up the majority.