James Holland always puts in the hard yards and walks the ground . Much respect.

At 35.15 James mentions Ginger Lacey. Was taught to fly by him at Bridlington in 1986. Am now a 20,000 hours plus airline captain. Fascinating individual and rubbished Bader's 'Big Wing Theory.

The Chieftain AND James Holland? Sign me the flipping-hell up.

My Dad was in the RAF during the war, and worked on Spitfires. He was a master mechanic and electrician.

I've had a great interest in the second world war since as a young lad watching all our yesterdays with Brian inglis, James Holland seems to bring a great nuts and bolts aprouch to the second world war. Absolutely enthralling for someone like me.

I need another 8 hours of this conversation to watch...

anyone notice how high the exhaust is on the 109? spanish version with merlin engine??

26.30 HAD 200 destroyers in 1939, by the end of the Battle of France the RN had fewer than 100 serviceable destroyers.

Aha, the Chieftain meets Holland - the two guys who between them completely changed my understanding of the operational element of tank warfare. Many thanks to both of you gentlemen!

Nice video! Glad to see the RAF getting it's due every once and a while.

he is awesome ., Have to pick up some of his books. His other videos at the US Archive are wonderful

I was interested enough to watch the entire interview, so well done!

to me the Spitfire is one of the best planes just because of the Merlin engine and the sound it made when it went by that noise is just glorious

The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfires en-mass. ‘The days of easy victory were over. We had met the RAF head on.’ Major Werner Kniepe of the Luftwaffe’s III /Kampfgeschwarder 2 From The Luftwaffe 1933-1945 Strategy For Defeat by Williamson Murray: _Over Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe suffered its first serious rebuff of the war. As Galland has noted, the nature and style of the air battles over the beaches should have provided a warning as to the inherent weaknesses of the Luftwaffe's force structure._ _Admittedly, the Germans fought at a disadvantage. Although positioned forward at captured airfields, the Bf 109 was at the outer limits of its range and possessed less flying time over Dunkirk than did the "Hurricanes" and "Spitfires" operating from southern England. German bombers were still located in western Germany and had even farther to fly. Thus, the Luftwaffe could not bring its full weight to bear so that when its bombers hammered those on the beaches or embarking, the RAF intervened in a significant fashion. German aircraft losses were high, and British fighter attacks often prevented German bombers from performing with full effectiveness. Both sides suffered heavy losses. During the nine days from May 26 through June 3, the RAF lost 177 aircraft destroyed or damaged; the Germans lost 240._ For much of the Luftwaffe,Dunkirk came as a nasty shock. FliegerkorpsII reported in its war diary that it lost more aircraft on the 27th attacking the evacuation than it had lost in the previous ten days of the campaign._ He goes on to say: _To a certain extent, the strategic collapse of the entire western position has obscured the significant attrition of German armored and air forces that took place during the fighting. At the beginning of the western offensive, the army possessed 2,574 tanks._ _By the armistice, the Germans had lost 753 tanks or nearly 30 percent of their armored forces. Luftwaffe losses of aircraft were on a similar scale (see Tables III, IV, V, and VI)._ _Tables III through VI underscore the extent of German aircraft losses in the Battle of France. They suggest that the tendency to view the Battle of Britain as a separate episode from the defeat of France does not do justice to the resistance of Allied air forces in the spring of 1940 and distort the fact that for five months, from May through September, the Luftwaffe, with only a short pause, was continuously in action. The break in morale of bomber pilots, reported over London in mid-September 1940, thus was the result not only of the strain of fighting over Britain but of operations that had been continuous from the previous May._ The Luftwaffe 1933-1945 (www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AAF-Luftwaffe/AAF-Luftwaffe-2.html)

Ahh! the much maligned Hurricane 1 with its canvas covered wings, 2 bladed Watts prop and running on 87 octane fuel and its 15 seconds of firing from 8 mg's as opposed to the 109's 55 seconds from 2 mg's. The cannon shells also tended to go through the canvas skin of the hurricane as opposed to the metal skin of the spit. Look at the hurricane pilots confirmed kills against 109's over France and the BOB, they shot down plenty. The air War in France was the luftwaffe's first defeat, the BOB was their second

Nice little chat. Very informative.

A fascinating discussion- thank you!👍

After watching five minutes of Hollands’ blitzkreig on the Chieftain is exhausting.

Good talk but why is there a MkIX Spitfire and a Bouchon in the background, neither were around during the Battle of France. Nice to see a Mk1 Blenheim though.

An 'inside the chieftain's cockpit' series would be awesome! Hint hint.

Great video very informative

This feels like Cheiftain is interrogating this fella. This guy did a great job with the tough questions!

Mr. James... about Stuka... and Dunkerk... I don't think stuka pilots were particularly trained to bomb ships... dive bombers sunk japanaise carriers at Midway but their pilots were trained to sunk ships... by the way... stukas won battle of france at Sedan. In fact there was just not much of Stukas, for example in opening of Barbarossa, only AG Center had stukas support, stukas simply needed fighter protection... like every other plain

Interesting as always. But I must note that it gives a wrong impression about dive bombings effectiveness against ships, it was actually very effective if IF you where well trained. The Japanese navy and US navy was and where effective. The best example was that because VMSB-241 was so unexpired at the battle of Midway Major Henderson ordered his med not to divebomb in the SBD's to attack in an unpowered dive. The Luftwaffe was not trained in attacking ships and as the Stukas pulled so many Gs in a dive that the crew would pass out it had a automatic pullout mechanism and they would be sitting ducks for a while if they did not have air superiority or for AA guns on British DD's.

Sorry James what about Army Co-Operation Command? In existence as 22 Group from 1926 to provide artillery observation, battlefield reconnaissance end light bombing. Such aircraft as the Hart and Lysander were specially built for this role, and it was practised in the deserts of the Middle East and Mountains of Afghanistan. Now it was not a success for numerous reasons (see Fleet Air Arm and how the RAF ruined that in the 1920s and 30s.) but it was there and in embryonic form it's squadrons would provide the basis for the desert air force, and provided superb support of the Army in 1940/41, which Wavell called pivotal.

We made good use of dive bombers in the Pacific specifically the Dauntless

Insightful

@19:10 Hurricane outturns Spitfire, but Spit has a faster rate of roll.

Great watch. More vids like that please.

Heavy Hermann couldn't even sit in an Me109.

Hurricanes were good but really no match for a bf109 so they were used against bombers so shot down more aircraft spitfires kept the 109s busy

Years ago Len Dieghton went over this ground in Blitzkrieg and Fighter - excellent accounts both. He made the obvious observation about Dunkirk that Hitler didn't call for an all-out offensive against Dunkirk was that nobody in the German high command could conceive of Operation Dynamo - it wasn't considered feasible. It simply wasn't considered at all. That's not so far from the RN's original expectations as I recall. As far as the BoB goes, Churchill seems to have thought a German invasion was unlikely because he sent British tanks to Egypt to help withstand the imminent Italian invasion. And yet. If you want to say that in retrospect, the RAF's victory was not a "miracle" - perhaps even likely, go ahead. There's truth in that analysis. (If nothing else, nobody in the LW had a clue as to what kind of air power was required to bring a nation to its knees - neither did the RAF and neither did the USAAF in 1942. It appears that Hitler was expecting a British peace overture at any minute.) Yet, war is littered with "blowback" or "unexpected consequences." See the three books written by the great historian John Lukacs over the very real possibility that Halifax might have convinced the British government to open talks with Hitler via Italy (before its entrance in the war in late June 1940). As I recall Deighton argued that even though Sea Lion was a real long shot, that a German mass attack with paratroopers could have seized a beachhead and caused utter panic in London. In 1940 it seemed that the Germans were routinely doing the impossible (and did it again in Crete) so who knows? If I was British, I'd still look at the summer of 1940 as the Finest Hour.

109 was not clearly superior to the spitfire. 109 did have the advantage in a dive, true, and was better armed overall, true, but the spitfire was tighter turning and slightly faster in level flight (though the difference was not significant, granted).

Edward VIII consulted with Hitler on the invasion of Belgium, leading to the evacuation of B.E.F at Dunkirk.

The Cheiftain had to go to the US to join a real army.

James Holland is largely wrong about dive-bombing. Nearly every Japanese aircraft carrier was sunk by dive bombers, the two Japanese super-battleships Yamato and Musashi were sunk by a combination of dive bombers and torpedo bombers and dive bombing take an equal toll of Japanese merchant shipping as submarine warfare.

Hm...a bit of Spitfire snobbery here as usual...

Just eating chicken sandwich stopped to watch this. Generally, nice one guys. Good discussion. Holland, a bit too revisionist for my taste. Also Germans over claimed like crazy hence their massive, massive scores claimed. I have read dozens of autobiographies which seem to prove this.

Holland is wrong about the Luftwaffe being a tactical air force. The focus of German doctrine was in destroying the enemy air force, and attacks on supply-interdiction. Close air support was not a priority. And that is borne out by procurement. In 1939, the only aircraft specifically designed for close air support was the Hs 123 biplane. The Ju 87 was a general purpose dive bomber, not a specialist close air support weapon.

British just escaped from battle field... it's funny to call it BEF fought in Belgium or France... they didn't fight... french did... so good that at lest...winning the war... they went bankrupt.. and lost its empery... by the way... Germans rule Europe, their plan worked this way or another.. in the end americans humiliated brits.. and rebuilt Germany... hahaha