That’s a running joke, nobody takes that seriously . They would dump it but changing the Constitution could result in war.
Except Britain wasn’t weakly defended. The RAF was superior to the Luftwaffe; admittedly, even they greatly overestimated the German Air Force.
The RN would have blown the Kriegsmarine out of the water if the Germans had been stupid enough to challenge them.
The German Army was superior, but there was that little matter of crossing the Channel.
2 Likes
20:20 hindsight.
After Dunkirk UK
ground forces were severely depleted and in no condition to oppose landings. IF the Luftwaffe had achieved air superiority over the Channel which was certainly possible with better tactics, its doubtful the RN could have opposed landings either, since WW2, particularly in the Pacific, showed that naval forces generally could not operate without air cover.
I’m pretty sure the British felt the Germans were a significant threat at the time, which is what I said.
All of which is kind of irrelevant to the irrelevance of aircraft carriers for attacking an offshore island, which was, like, the schwerpunkt
1 Like
I have never said that they need aircraft carriers I said the opposite , so instead of asking me to look at a map maybe look carefully at my posts first before misquoting me. I said their two carriers are pathetic and yes totally not needed for an attack on Taiwan… 
1 Like
Well, since you now acknowledge that your…er…critique of the Chinese carrier was irrelevant, you’ve saved me the aggro.
Yes it was a response to another poster bragging about their 2 trashy carriers. Anyway …
The RAF was massively outnumbered. But this Issue was balanced out by fighting at home combined with radar meaning the fighters could engage accurately.
Both really helpful in mounting a strong defence, numbers don’t tell the whole story (for Britain or Taiwan).
They don’t but Taiwans technological advantage has been eroded. Their only real advantages are from being an island.
If you count any and all aircraft, including the useless Stukas and fairly useless twin-engine bombers. In fighters the British were slightly outnumbered, except the location gave the ME-109s only ten minutes of flying time over Britain.
Can the WWII discussion be done in its own thread?
1 Like
Another Taiwan special forces group along with the marine Frogman are highly rated.
Well it’s relevant to this discussion. The reason the RAF won was a combination of location and technology ( radar and high octane fuel etc, super marine Spitfires ) defeating numbers ( outnumbered 3-1 ) This was always Taiwans advantage. But for whatever reasons Taiwans government has allowed the technology aspect to be eroded and the numbers disadvantage to be made even worse. So is the fact Taiwan is an island all it will take ?
1 Like
In terms of combat aircraft, they cannot control the production of 5th generation fighters in China, or the US’s unwillingness to sell 5th generation fighters to Taiwan. That is the reason, and not because it was allowed by the Taiwanese government.
If Taiwan chooses to fight (this is the government and military position) they can expect Japan and the US to help; there are obvious caveats, such as if China somehow launches a surprise attack so sudden and overwhelming that the take control of the island in a week.
And home field advantage was mentioned above. Not just the island but the specific geography of this specific island and the fact that the easy avenues of landing and advance are well known. Sure, PRC spies probably have inside information on what kind of landmines and traps will be placed where, but even with that knowledge it is still difficult to cross a minefield when being shot at.
1 Like
Two reports on China’a aircraft carriers
1 Like
Good shares
NI article:
I don’t think it was the author’s intent, but the phrase
brings to my mind a problem with the PLA; they have been unable to domestically produce anything dangerous, so it seems unlikely that can they surpass the US military technologically within the next decade or two. Their working carriers are old Soviet designs, they have been unable to produce their own jet engines for their new fighters, and even the next generation of Chinese space rockets are clearly stolen from SpaceX.
Agreed. And this is good news for Taiwan, because the loss of prestige that would be incurred if/when these carriers were sunk are another cost that weighs into the cost/benefit analysis of military invasion under current circumstances.
Diplomat:
I read elsewhere about the benefit of launching planes from east of Taiwan when most defences are facing west; this sort of pincer movement serves to split defences and raises chances of aircraft softening up ground defences in advance of landing. As the NI article points out, however, there won’t likely be carriers left to return to so it is an expensive gamble even if it pays off.
Good articles. Yup, they would get sunk by the US or even by Taiwan, the loss of morale on the PLA and CCP would be huge.
Can you imagine if Taiwan sank it in an invasion. “We just sank their carrier”.
That is smart of the CCP to allocate the money elsewhere, like landing craft, mine sweepers…
1 Like
Can’t see why any surviving aircraft couldn’t just fly on to China, which is likely to be closer anyway, and would probably be still there
Depends on how much fuel they’ve expended (was it one of those articles that pointed out weight restrictions of ski-jump launching, or did I read that elsewhere?) and how much of the western facing anti-air defences are still capable of firing, I suppose. Also depends on how many of the airfields within range have or have not been destroyed by Taiwanese counter-fire at the outset of a hot war. So, still an expensive gamble.
This echoes my opinions pretty closely, not sure which of the China-Taiwan-US threads it fits best on so I’ll leave it here since we’ve been on this one lately. One excerpt that I think is particularly relevant to the back and forth on this thread:
1 Like
Carrier based aircraft typically don’t need much of a runway to land and could be VTOL. Not that it matters much