During WWII, my Dad flew bombers (Wellington, Sterlings & Halifax's) and my Mum was in the Fire Service based in South East London.
As has been mentionted before, if the Germans had crossed the channel chasing the BEF we would have been stuffed. At that time we had no Spitfires, just a handful of Hurricanes and the rest were bi-planes, slow and unmanouverable. We had very little in the way of a Navy, most of which was in the North Sea.
What many people don't realise is that Hitler's socialist government had workers designing Aircraft, Ships and Tanks under the guise of vehicles for commercial applications. Germany was not allowed to produce military vehicles after the 1st World War. Most of the Luftwaffe bombers were designed as "cargo" planes, the ships were "Merchant" designs and believe it or not, those amazingly advanced tanks were for "agricultural" use.
However, Hitler had pitched millions into research and many of their developments were years ahead of anything else in the worrld. Thier biggest failure was a common fault - They believed the thier hype, got complaicent and made major mistakes. The advance on Russia was a major mistake. Rather than stand & fight, when the Russians realised how poorly the Germans were equiped, they just retreated, burning every building on the way, giving the Germans no cover for a long harsh winter. Stalin just waited until the time was right, and made a major offensive. His strategy was fantastic, he saved many of his own lives while the German army became weaker.
The 3rd and probably most crucial mistake, was the agreement with Japan to let them run the Asia/Pacific region. Bringing the Americans into the war at a time when British reserves were running low was fatal. Although the US forces were not as good as ours, their sheer weight of numbers and the amount of equipment they had swung the scale the other way.
It's amazing that Hitlers Germany had produced a number of superior tactical vehicles, the U boats and Panzers are just 2 examples, but when it came to the air, they couldn't compete with the 2 British fighters, the Mosquito was leagues ahead of anything else in it's class, and our bombers were far more effective.
Sorry, long post, but the subject used to be a bit of a passion with me....
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