BOB a mistake ? --- The Battle of France

[MB_Avro_UK]

Hi all,

There seems to be some blame attached to the British Expeditionary Force withdrawing at Dunkirk.

The BEF only comprised 10% of the Allied forces available. Their 10% alone would not have stopped the German adavance.

The BEF were involved in fierce rear guard actions. Indeed, over 200 British prisoners were executed by the SS Liebstandarte because of their rear guard actions. These were not 'heat of the moment' executions but took place the day after capture if my memory serves me right.

The leader of these executions is alive and well in Bavaria and has a German Army pension.

WW2 German Army pensions are far higher than British Army pensions.

Also, thousands of French Army soldiers were evacuated to Britain at Dunkirk.

And France was declared a winner in WW2. She was given a sector in Germany to control after WW2 along with Russia,USA and Britain.

Ok..Churchill refused to send Spitfires to France. Good decision as he could see that the battle was lost in France. The Spitfires helped win the BoB along with French pilots in the RAF. If the BoB had been lost or a draw, France would perhaps still be occupied by the Nazis today?

From what I have read, the allies expected a repetition of WW1 with fixed lines. This of course did not happen.

It's not historically correct to blame the Dunkirk evacuation on the defeat of France.

Sorry for the long post gentlemen!

Best Regards,
MB_Avro.

[RM_Phoenix]

~S~ Gentlemen,this is my first post at this fabulous site ,have been a big fan of this IL2 for quite some time now and due to work am not able to fly as much any more ,but any way heres a thought and iI know it would be a ticket to print money cause I would pay thousands for it .... so heres the idea make a combat flight sim from the very first combat flight to the present ,having the base as IL2 46 and then BOB and any other add on that has been made ,I can here all , code and so on ,,there has to be a way to do something like this ,,someone somewhere has the brains to put this together ,, but it 's NOT ME LOL ~S~

[Bobb4]

The reason why France was lost is simple.
1) The French army failed to used its tanks units correctly.
2) No attempt was made to slow the German's down, especially in Paris. Look how the Russians took it, fighting in every street of every city till the last.
3) The French allowed most of it's airforce to be destroyed on the ground.

So did the British withdrawing cause the collapse, the answer is no, the collapse begand in the Ardenne Forrest. French troops spent their time falling back to form a line of defence.
As they fell back the troops on the ground developed the retreat mentality which is devastating to an army unless properly explained and can easily turn into a rout.

A similair example can be seen with the staged withdrawal of ARVN forces in Vietnam in 1975.
The ARVN generals wanted to group their forces to stage a massive counter attack.
But all the troops on the ground knew was they were withdrawing, retreating...
This led to the total collapse of a superior army in both numbers and firepower.
The fault being poor communication.
The same goes for why France was lost.

[Spectrum]

I'm not sure that its entirely correct to say that the French didn't use their tanks correctly. The main Allied tank forces were in the north where large tank v tank (French v German) tank battles occurred. The French held their own here, but due to the Panzer breakthrough in the south the allied forces in the north were obliged to fall back. Why? because of the perception in the high command that they had to maintain a continuous front. Sure, the French would have done better to concentrate their tanks more, but they don't seem to have performed badly when they did come to action.

The main failing of the French command was, 1. To change Commanders in mid-battle, and 2. To fail to concentrate all available reserves to counterattack from the south. The germans were severely pressed by French attacks at Stonne, south of Sedan, but this action was not given the resources which it needed, and resources were wasted holding ground where no attack was seriously threatened

By falling back all of their damaged tanks were lost, whereas the Germans in moving forward recovered many damaged armoured vehicles and effected field repairs to bring them back into action.

The other factor in mobile warfare is the steady attrition of vehicles and tanks due to wear and tear, not battle damage. The retreating army will lose all of these vehicles while the advancing force will recover and repair them. The same goes for artillery and other heavy support systems. Same goes for slightly damaged aircraft destroyed by their own side because of the perceived need to retreat.

The BoF was lost in the minds of the Generals long before it was lost on the ground.

Where the allied forces stood their ground they generally performed well but were poorly supported by their commanders who were too out of touch with what was happening.

[tools4fools]

As for BoB/BoF dispute:

- in my opinion the BOB is a much better choice for a first for several reasons: it is more popular and well known, therefore sales will be better...good for Oleg and team, good for us as it ensures tehre will be many more add-ons for SoW
- BoB needs less planes to be modeled to have a quite good set or aircraft.
- Hurricanes, Spitfires, Me's, He's, Do's, Stukas, etc, etc, almost all planes were widely use in other theaters and can be used again in future add-ones.
Like Africa - you add new maps, few more Italian planes, first US planes (P-40), few more German and British flyable which were Ai only in BoB. With comparatively little use of resources a new add-on. Plus 'backwards' it will make BoB more complete.

- For this modular approach I think BoB is much better choice of than BoF.

In BoF there is such a large number of different FRENCH aircraft needed that it takes a lot of resources. And none of them can be used much outside of BoF much. MS 406 in Finland indeed plus the Fokker, D520 already very little other use. Many many other important planes with almost no further use: Fairey battle, the lot of French bombers, Bloch fighter, etc.
In that sense BoB is better suited - and that's from me who loves the crap planes, the underdogs and the oddities (love those Farman bombers and the other odd bombers of the French).
If there ever is a BoF I would fly for France 95% of time me thinks...

Great sequence after SoW I would love to see would be:
Africa - add more italian, more flyable brit and german; first US planes.
Russia - (early war) add russian, add more US.
Pacifc - (early war) we got the brit planes by now and some US. So add more US and japanese.

The start all over again for mid and very late war...
++++

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[heywooood]

is this where people come to bash the BoB and wish Oleg had done something else....?

I wish people would get a grip already - thanks Oleg and don't let BoB quit - theres no one else can do that job

I think starting such a complainers thread is worse than starting a new flight sim based on BoB...that guy's amazing.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by heywooood

is this where people come to bash the BoB and wish Oleg had done something else....?

No its not. --- This thread is about the Battle of France and to try and raise interest in a BoB add-on, because no sim has seriously addressed it before. There has been serious and heated debate about the reasons for the allied defeat.

Try reading more of the thread before jumping to conclusions please.

The Battle of France would make a great add-on. The air forces on each side were reasonably balanced, at least in numbers and there is great scope for historic ground support action -- more so than in BoB.

I cant wait for BoB and have, like everybody else been drooling over the meagre scraps of information released, but that doesnt stop me hoping that after BoB we might get something to cover BoF.

[Rama]

Originally Posted by tools4fools

As for BoB/BoF dispute:
In BoF there is such a large number of different FRENCH aircraft needed that it takes a lot of resources. And none of them can be used much outside of BoF much. MS 406 in Finland indeed plus the Fokker, D520 already very little other use. Many many other important planes with almost no further use: Fairey battle, the lot of French bombers, Bloch fighter, etc.

I quite disagree with this.

For main French fighters, we got:
- Morane MS406, used by Luftwaffe (Training), Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy and Switzerland (ok.. the last didn't saw much fights)
- Dewoitine D520, used by Luftwaffe (training), Italy, Bulgaria and Romania (and a bit by Free French in North Africa)
- Hawk H75, used by Finland, Norway, RAF (Mohawks IV), Siam (fighting against French MS406), and USA (a few P36 did fight in Pearl Harbor)
The only remaining main fighter is the Bloch MB152, who could be AI only

For main French Bombers, we got:
- Loire et Olivier LeO451, used as light transport by Luftwaffe, and by Italy (the less used plane outside BoF, but important for BoF)
- Glenn Martin 167F, used by RAF as Maryland MkI in Egypt and Malta fights, and who was followed by Martin 187 (RAF Baltimore), widely used in North Africa theater, and who is not very different from 167F.
- Douglas DB7, used by RAF as Boston, and who was further developped under designation A-20... widelly used by Allies.
Most of other bombers weren't largelly used by French and can be ignored, or only AI (for the Breguet 690/693 for example)

Other than these, it stay only the observation planes (Potez 63x and Bloch MB.174) who could be AI.
That's 6 flyable planes (5 of them usable by other nationalities on other theater) and 4 AI... certainly not a small deal.... but also not THAT large.

Of course you could add a lot of crapy/largelly unused (even during BoF) planes... but there's no good reason to.

[JVM]

Hello!

Didn't the Br 693 see a lot of combat as ground support and light bombers? Granted they were slaughtered but they wrote a glorious if bloody page of the FAF...

JV

[Rama]

Br690/693 should be at least AI.
It saw less missions than Leo451 or GM 167F... and it would be quite frustrating to fly with only role of low level bombing (no bombsight)... so for flyable I think it should have a lower priority than the 2 other... but's that's only my oppinion (and not very usefull oppinion... since BoF will not be developped if not by third party).
I'm sure that some would want the Amiot 354 also... even if it appeared very late and in a very few number during BoF, and saw very little fighting...