Obligatory GENTLEMEN

What can i say?

Britain had to take up a lot more of the fighting early on and a lot more of the "tactical re-assessment".

Although I am surprised they lost a few submarines to the Germans. German ASW posed a serious risk of Friendly Fire.

Eboreg said:
Although I am surprised they lost a few submarines to the Germans. German ASW posed a serious risk of Friendly Fire.

Everyones ASW posed a serious risk of friendly fire, the submarine if submerged often couldn't really tell who was attacking it and the surface ships sure as hell couldn't either. It hardly helped that for reasons of convergent evolution almost all submarines looked really similiar at a distance so even when surfaced it was a problem. I know the USN took to having DE or DDs escort leaving or returning submarines once they reached the vicinity of allied areas.

Tk3997 said:

Everyones ASW posed a serious risk of friendly fire, the submarine if submerged often couldn't really tell who was attacking it and the surface ships sure as hell couldn't either. It hardly helped that for reasons of convergent evolution almost all submarines looked really similiar at a distance so even when surfaced it was a problem. I know the USN took to having DE or DDs escort leaving or returning submarines once they reached the vicinity of allied areas.

Of course, I was talking more about the ratio of friendly subs to enemy subs :P

Oh come on, you can't talk about the Royal Navy being humiliated about it's boasts when fighting the Regia Marina. In spite of basically fighting the entire war in the Mediterranean practically on Italy's front lawn and there being absolutely ZERO excuse for Malta not to be reduced to paste within a matter of months in the war, the RN basically managed to achieve every single one of their strategic goals with minimal losses while within range of land-based air support that, more often than not, did more damage to the Italian ships than the British.

This doesn't show the other side's losses at all. It basically implies that any military that can't fight a war without suffering ZERO losses is automatically a failure.

NWSiaCB said:

Oh come on, you can't talk about the Royal Navy being humiliated about it's boasts when fighting the Regia Marina. In spite of basically fighting the entire war in the Mediterranean practically on Italy's front lawn and there being absolutely ZERO excuse for Malta not to be reduced to paste within a matter of months in the war, the RN basically managed to achieve every single one of their strategic goals with minimal losses while within range of land-based air support that, more often than not, did more damage to the Italian ships than the British.

This doesn't show the other side's losses at all. It basically implies that any military that can't fight a war without suffering ZERO losses is automatically a failure.

Their sub fleet was hit the worst in this part, while the DD, BB and CV groups suffered worst against Fritz. (especially compared against the Nips; even though they ironically used air power to sink the Bismarck it came back to bite them off Kota Bahru...)

The numbers could have been worse for the British; they could have included the two battleships Italian frogmen sank in Alexandria.

NWSiaCB said:

Oh come on, you can't talk about the Royal Navy being humiliated about it's boasts when fighting the Regia Marina. In spite of basically fighting the entire war in the Mediterranean practically on Italy's front lawn and there being absolutely ZERO excuse for Malta not to be reduced to paste within a matter of months in the war, the RN basically managed to achieve every single one of their strategic goals with minimal losses while within range of land-based air support that, more often than not, did more damage to the Italian ships than the British.

This doesn't show the other side's losses at all. It basically implies that any military that can't fight a war without suffering ZERO losses is automatically a failure.

"the RN basically managed to achieve every single one of their strategic goals with minimal losses"
That's exaggeration on the opposite side. The Royal Navy clearly won the battle of the Mediterranean, but not *that* easily. The Malta convoys often suffered heavy losses, and attacks on Axis convoys to North Africa caused severe losses of Axis shipping, but despite "popular history" did not prevent most of the supplies from getting through, except in Autumn of 1941. And the Royal Navy suffered in the Mediterranean the most severe losses of submarines (mostly by Italian forces), cruisers and destroyers (although the Germans contributed a lot for these two categories of ships).

"within range of land-based air support that, more often than not, did more damage to the Italian ships than the British"

...wat?

"This doesn't show the other side's losses at all. It basically implies that any military that can't fight a war without suffering ZERO losses is automatically a failure."

That's right, the Royal Navy suffered heavy losses but inflicted far heavier on its enemies. Anyway, this is just a semi-ironic comic, don't beat yourself too much.

Victory don't come easy.