What is done is done, and perhaps we are in a situation now as we were in 1937/8. Our military wound down after WW1, with the new force for modern battle, the aeroplane not up to date with mostly obsolete aircraft, and an army small enough to have almost been wiped out in one go later in 1940. Our navy did not have the right ships, with the high command still set on war using battleships, not the aircraft carriers that would be needed. So yes, we have been here before, but I hope that behind the scenes things are happening, and certain officials are being woken up to the reality of life.
Military equipment is always restocked to fight the last war better. How else can you do this, as you have no clue what clever idea is going to come the next time somebody pulls a trigger?
And my grandfather(a man with 7 years in the Ordnance Corps before Dunkirk) reckoned the best thing that happened to the pre-WW2 British army kit was to dump it in Northern France. I doubt the Navy was any better off.
That is all too often very true with British forces, but not with other countries. Why should that be?
But it does not have to be that way, and should not have been with Britain in the past. In terms of the British (the creators of the aircraft carrier) failure to recognise in the 1930's that war at sea would be fought and won with the latest aircraft flying off of the most modern carriers. The Japanese and Americans both recognised this, but the Royal Navy kept on in their dogmatic approach that the battleship was still going to be the key element and their policy with ship building reflected this. In 1939 the Royal Navy had 7 old carriers, some originally converted from being battle cruisers. Of those 5 would be sunk by 1941. I think most know about the Japanese and their policy on using modern carriers and the latest aircraft on them; Pearl Harbour summed it up with the aircraft trumping the US battleships. The US had also recognised the vital importance of the carrier and they won the pacific sea battles to come with them. It is always going to be a point of debate that
maybe the US sacrificed some battleships at Pearl but sent their carriers out to sea on a "training exercise" before the attack and thus escape from the battle; very controversial, yes, but it will always be debated by historians.
In terms of the RAF, since 1933 intelligence was available to the British Government that Germany was rapidly rearming, and had in particular started to create a new air force, against the Versailles Treaty of 1919, but they were advancing from having glider clubs, to full scale war planes. Churchill repeatedly warned about this, but the government continued to happily go along with the RAF having obsolete, or not fit for modern purpose, aircraft, and not many of them. It was not until the mid 1930's that the government woke up to the need for modern advance fighters, Hurricanes and Spitfires, and started to order them in 1937/38. But not in large quantities, even though the Luftwaffe had been built up by then to very large numbers.
The point I am making is that it is the British who seem to be reluctant to look far ahead and build a military fit to take on modern forces in the future; they are so often stuck in the past, and ignore the trends that other countries (future enemy) identify with. It is again the case today that our forces have been left behind in terms of new equipment and supply, and the government will have to race to catch up if the worst fears are realised. We live again in a very dangerous world and the government should do all that it can to belatedly re-equip, even if other "priorities" suffer.
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Topic: Boris interview on BBC this morning (Read 5577 times)