Bowls filled with excitement and mystery. History of the oldest Moscow stadiums

Dmitry Shepelev and Sabina Pantus (400,000 - 0 rubles)

1. What does catfish have?

2. What is another name for a zipper?

3. Who is Kuzya from Tatyana Alexandrova’s fairy tale?

4. Which actress unexpectedly gave her name to a musical group in 2003?

5. What repairs does the old house require?

6. What is the name of a piece of clothing that is cut off?

7. In which country, before the transition to the euro, was the escudo currency used?

8. What beetle was sacred to the ancient Egyptians?

9. What is the name of the central square of Amsterdam, where the royal palace is located?

10. What color is missing from a classic dartboard?

11. What did the creators of Pobeda originally want to call the car?

12. Which poet did the hero of the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” call “a very promising guy”?

Questions for the second pair of players

Evelina Bledans and Ekaterina Gordon (400,000 - 0 rubles)

1. What do drivers call the parking brake of a car?

2. Who rode a broom in Chukovsky’s fairy tale “The Cockroach”?

3. What is not included in the kit of personal emergency rescue equipment for an air passenger?

4. What question is usually not expected to be answered?

5. What is the purpose of the bomboniere?

6. How did the Shooting Manual dictate that rifles should be stored in the guardhouse?

7. Who didn’t help the girl in the fairy tale “Geese and Swans” by Alexei Tolstoy?

8. Which building is not located on Palace Square in St. Petersburg?

9. What kind of shoes have come into fashion among surfers?

10. What was planted in large quantities in 1942 on the football field of the Moscow Dynamo stadium?

Answers to questions from the first pair of players

1. snake
2. brownie
3. Uma Thurman
4. capital
5. yoke
6. Portugal
7. dung beetle
8. blue
9. "Motherland"
10. Evgenia Yevtushenko

Answers to questions from the second pair of players

1. handbrake
2. parachute
3. to rhetorical
4. for candy
5. in the pyramid
6. geese-swans
7. Tauride Palace

Afternoon of August 19, port of Dieppe. A German infantryman inspects the results of his work.

« Second front"How much in this sound, for the heart, Boltsevisticschen merged... or about one " special operation"August 19, 1942.

It's worth talking about " Second front“in the Second World War, as any Soviet citizen will tell you, it was opened too late, in 1944, when the fate of the Reich was already clearly decided. But didn’t Sralin or other Soviet leaders try to force “ allies» open the Second Front a little earlier, when the fate of the war had not yet been decided? They tried, and in 1942. What did they do? allies"in response to Sralin's rightfully panicky demand to open immediately" Second front“and at least somehow ease the monstrous pressure of the Reich in the East?

Landed at Dieppe, August 19, 1942.

British military equipment destroyed by the Germans during the landing.

Only 6,000 people landed and were opposed by only 1,500 Germans. The task of the Anglo-Canadians was to probe the soil, land troops, destroy everything in the coastal strip, and then leave before the arrival of the main units of the German army, demonstrating that a large-scale landing operation was possible. It goes without saying that " allies“They did everything to screw up the landing - no one smiled at landing in Europe in 1942, meeting the best units of the Wehrmacht.

Therefore, the first thing the British did was leak the landing date to the Germans. The date is a day later - the landing was initially planned for August 18, the Germans were informed about August 19. Then an invisible force in the British General Staff did everything in its power to delay preparations and ensure that the landing began on the 19th. Then the British made up the bulk of the landing party - 5,000 people - from inexperienced Canadian conscripts (I don’t feel sorry for the Canadians!), who had no combat experience, especially for such complex operations. It is characteristic that the 1,000 British commandos accompanying the Canadians were also unable to complete their combat missions, while the poor colonial infantry was shot like chickens. But that's not all! If the British set out to screw up something, then they can’t do without branded English humor. On August 17, the well-known newspaper The Daily Telegraph published a crossword puzzle in which “ French port, five letters" Answer? Of course, Dieppe!

German soldiers and commanders happily pose on British tanks.

Finally, on the day of the landing, the English squadron accidentally (was it by chance?) came across a German convoy, a firefight began, and all pitiful scraps of surprise were lost. When the British landing craft reached the beaches, all the Germans were at their battle posts, dressed, clean-shaven, having eaten a hearty breakfast and singing “... And now we will fight, fight for 7 days in a row. But we don't fight one by one, just all together».

The Germans simply destroyed the first wave of those who landed with machine gun and mortar fire. Few survivors claimed to have seen training marks on which the Germans learned to fire mortars shortly before the landing. The second wave was also demolished. Only 6 tanks were able to overcome the beaches, which, having become confused without infantry on the streets of Dieppe, were abandoned by their crews. Of the 5,000 Canadians who landed, 68% were killed, wounded or captured. The landing units simply ceased to exist. Even 1,000 burned-out soldiers were unable to complete their combat missions.” commando" And they lost more than 200 people that day, essentially acting as cannon fodder. On top of that, the Royal Air Force had lost the air battle to the Luftwaffe, and the pitiful remnants of the landing force were tearing German planes to shreds. 4 hours after the landing began, the BBC officially announced it in its French broadcast, advising the French to evacuate. " Here we are landing a little near you. P.S. Don't tell the Germans»!

Then, however, the BBC fell silent - and even the English press had to draw primary information about losses from German reports. Turning the landing of the Anglo-Saxons into something unimaginable. All this was broadcast on the Eastern Front and, undoubtedly, reached Sralin, as if hinting that he must hold the Wehrmacht alone.
Of the 5,000 Canadians, 3,367 were killed, wounded or captured. Out of 1000 British commandos - 247 people. 1 English destroyer and 33 landing ships were destroyed, the fleet lost 550 killed and wounded. Plus 108 aircraft were lost (with Luftwaffe losses of 18 aircraft). The Germans, fighting off this travesty of an attack, lost only 591 people, everywhere (even in the work sector " commando") while maintaining control of the coastal defense line. Worse, the silence of the British media turned the already horrendous landing into an absolute PR disaster. Goebbels enthusiastically absorbed the events at Dieppe for another month. Hitler for his actions in repelling the landing " calm and patience» gave the city of Dieppe 10 million francs and sent home 1,500 French prisoners of war. And that’s what they said to the freaked-out French, and they didn’t laugh: “ Werden Sie zum Hitler hören, - Sie essen Süßigkeiten"! Translated into Russian, these words will sound something like this: “ If you listen to Hitler, you will eat candy»!

Question about opening« Second Front» was successfully closed for another 2 years.

And today " five letter French port“It’s no longer customary to remember.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, after the winter successes of 1941-1942 near Moscow, Tikhvin and Rostov, Stalin was in a state of euphoria. It was Stalin’s frivolity, who overestimated the capabilities of the Red Army and underestimated the Wehrmacht, that, according to the established opinion, became the cause of the disaster near Kharkov, in the Crimea and the Germans’ advance to Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

In order to understand this issue, it is necessary to abstract from today’s knowledge of the situation and take the place of Stalin and our military leadership. Indeed, the events of the winter of 1941, when the Germans retreated, often without offering resistance, created in Stalin the illusion of a moral breakdown of the enemy. At the same time, Stalin was well aware that with the beginning of spring the enemy could resume the offensive and seize the strategic initiative.

Stalin correctly assessed the growth of Germany's military-industrial potential, its transfer to the conditions of a protracted war, the appointment of Speer as head of military production, the mobilization of European resources, the massive use of slave labor, and the labor of prisoners of war.

Therefore, in Stalin’s opinion, it was necessary not to give the Germans a break and to continue the offensive. Then at our Headquarters the concept of a “mass offensive” was born, which implied simultaneous active actions in all strategic directions.

In 1942, the USSR produced 25 thousand aircraft, 24 thousand tanks, 57 thousand guns. The USSR transferred its industry and administration to a military footing and was ready for a protracted and difficult war. In Germany, despite all efforts, such a total mobilization of society did not work out. Firstly, German workers absolutely did not want to lose the material wealth acquired under the Nazis and did not perform any labor feats in the rear; secondly, the Nazis had to fill many jobs with forced or semi-forced workers from occupied countries or prisoners of war, whose labor productivity was not high.

In Germany, there could be no question of putting millions of women and teenagers at the machines, so that they would work for fourteen or more hours for food cards, live in dugouts and barracks, and even give their savings to the defense fund.

This was a conscious feat of our people - this is what made them strong. When during the war, Stalin ordered the Nudelman air cannon to be urgently put into production, this designer and his assistants lived for several weeks at the shooting range, where the experimental shooting of a 37-mm air cannon took place. The engineers' bunks stood three meters from the gun machine, and shell casings rained down on the people sleeping in turns. Nevertheless, they later unanimously assured that these weeks at the shooting range were the brightest, most joyful time in their lives.

Today they are trying to convince us that a person can only receive satisfaction by consuming material goods, overeating and being idle, and this example shows how happy difficulties can make a person if they have been overcome on the way to a great goal and are filled with the consciousness of the necessity of their work.

Nevertheless, when planning the 1942 campaign, Stalin, Headquarters and the General Staff first of all tried to predict the enemy’s intentions for the summer of 1942.

This analysis was carried out in conditions of an extreme shortage of reliable intelligence data, which was associated with the still weak development of the partisan movement in the occupied areas, the lack of experience in strategic analysis among our military intelligence, and Germany’s skillful actions to disguise its intentions.

And here one should not think that only our generals and Stalin were such mugs that the Germans skillfully disguised all their intentions from them. During the Second World War, in all its theaters, the side that had the strategic initiative easily misled the enemy, creating the illusion of preparing a strike in the wrong direction. Let's remember Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Normandy landings, the capture of Crete, the defeat of France. Our army also gave the Germans many similar surprises, we will talk about them later.

The increased maneuverability of troops, the capabilities of railways, and the presence of aviation made it possible to transfer forces from one strategic direction to another in a day or two and completely unexpectedly deliver a devastating blow to the enemy. A similar situation arose near Kharkov in 1942. Both Stalin and our generals perfectly understood the significance of Kharkov, Stalingrad and the Caucasus for the country and the fate of the front. However, based on the available data and analysis of the location of the German troops, the main attack was not expected there.

If we look for the culprits in such an assessment, then they are B.M. Shaposhnikov and the General Staff, who through their intelligence and analytical bodies were unable to identify the concentration of groups of troops of Paulus and Kleist in the area of ​​​​Kharkov and Kramatorsk, did not reveal the German disguise of the Blau plan, did not establish the number of troops of Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, transferred from Europe. The General Staff also made a mistake in determining the Wehrmacht's losses in 1941 and incorrectly assessed its strength on the Eastern Front as a whole.

Another thing is that, apparently, there was simply no alternative to the chosen course of action. The problem was that the Germans were still superior to the Red Army in both quality and quantity. This superiority was manifested in the Crimea, where Manstein’s small corps completely defeated our Crimean Front, and near Moscow, where in the Vyazma region the 33rd Army of General M.G. was surrounded and destroyed. Efremova, 1st Guards Cavalry Corps and 4th Airborne Corps near Leningrad, where all attempts to break through the blockade ring failed. These failures are not the result of someone’s mistake, guilt or ill will, but solely of the superiority of the German army over ours, which persisted in 1942.

Therefore, it is not of decisive importance whether the attack by Tymoshenko’s troops on Kharkov was carried out or not, Operation Blau - the throw into the Caucasus would have taken place in any case. Even a year later, near Kursk, knowing exactly where to expect Manstein’s attack, our troops were barely able to stop him with two tank armies and a number of anti-tank weapons that were not physically available in 1942. And the troops and commanders in 1943 were different.

It is doubtful that Stavka, having abandoned attacks near Kharkov, Crimea and Leningrad and concentrating all its forces, say, near Moscow, would have defeated Army Group Center in the summer of 1942. Stavka was also required to make a decision regarding the release of Sevastopol, for which all the prerequisites were present. Tymoshenko’s attack near Kharkov, along with success in Crimea, could result in a strategic offensive of the Red Army in Ukraine.

What Stalin is really to blame for in this situation is that he appointed Zhukov as his deputy after the disaster in the South, and not before it. While on the Western Front, Zhukov could not understand in detail the situation near Kharkov, visit the troops and assess the real situation. It must be admitted that Stalin also at that moment overestimated to some extent his personal leadership abilities.

The theorizing of some modern researchers about the mistakes of the Soviet command and belated recommendations for troop leadership are simply not serious. We should not forget that at the head of our armies were Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, whose qualifications there is no doubt. They made a decision based on the available information and adequate to the conditions that existed at that time, to the state of the Red Army with which they had to deal.

On June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began - the bloodiest war in history, which lasted 1,418 days and nights.

We, Moscow Dynamo players, are proud that representatives of the Dynamo Society, together with athletes from other societies, contributed to the victory over Nazi Germany. They fought on the fronts and behind enemy lines, worked in the factories of our Motherland in the name of the Great Victory, trained reserves for the Red Army, became the initiators of the “thousanders” movement, pledging to train a thousand soldiers for the needs of the front.

The country's main sports arena, the Dynamo stadium, has turned into a training center for young fighters, a military training camp. Already on June 27, detachments of OMSBON (Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purposes) began to be formed there, from among the volunteer athletes of the Central State Institute of Physical Culture and the Dynamo Society, who were then sent behind enemy lines.

The Dynamo stadium itself was camouflaged from enemy air raids and was carefully guarded. In the winter of 1942, young spruce trees were planted on the football field for the purpose of camouflage, which clearly demonstrated the state’s concern for preserving the capital’s main sports attraction.

During the Battle of Moscow, OMSBON as part of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division of the NKVD Special Purpose Troops was used on the front line, but even at this time combat groups were formed within it, intended to be deployed to the enemy rear. In the winter of 1941/1942, OMSBON mobile units conducted many successful raids and raids behind German lines.

OMSBON terrified the Nazi invaders, conducting daring and decisive operations behind enemy lines. The functions of OMSBON included: conducting reconnaissance operations, organizing guerrilla warfare, creating an agent network in territories under German occupation, and managing special radio games with German intelligence in order to misinform the enemy.

The war brought grief to every family, to every home, and disrupted the peaceful life of millions of people. The people defended their homeland at the cost of huge losses. Our courageous warriors defended their native land, turned back the fascist hordes and defeated them.

Over the years, the greatness of the feat of our soldiers and officers, home front workers, women, children - everyone who brought Victory Day closer - has not faded. We are proud of the heroism, resilience, and dedication of our compatriots. These days will never be forgotten. That is why, by decree of June 8, 1996, June 22 was established in Russia as the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. In all cities of our country and many neighboring countries, mourning events are held on this day; we remember everyone who died a brave death on the battlefields, who died from wounds in hospitals, and who were tortured in concentration camps. Eternal memory and glory to them!

• In 2011, the Moscow Dynamo VFSO Dynamo city organization launched the Moscow Dynamo Veterans project. It is symbolic that the first in this series was an audio diary dedicated to Dynamo veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Many of the interviews recorded then, to our great chagrin, became the last...

Photo: RIA Novosti, oldmos.ru, pastvu.com

First, let's clarify the concept: by the second front we mean the Allied land front against Germany, diverting significant German forces, and not just diverting, but also grinding them down.

That is, Libya-Egypt is not the 2nd front, since 3 German divisions operated there*. The scale is too small compared to the 180 German divisions on the Soviet-German front.

Tunisia - 6-7 German divisions; Sicily - 3.

Since the fall of 1943 - front in Italy (17 German divisions). It’s already better, but the scale is still not significant.

The Allies, especially the British, promoted their efforts at sea (the Battle of the Atlantic) and in the air (the air offensive against Germany) as a 2nd Front. Yes, Germany's resources were diverted to this fight. But in the six years 1939-45, the Allies in the Atlantic killed as many as 30,000 Germans. Too few compared to the millions killed on the Soviet-German front. Therefore, military operations in the Atlantic are not a 2nd front.

Bombing of Germany: many more Germans were killed. Only bombing began to cause serious losses to the Germans in 1944, when the real 2nd front had already been opened.

The Allies, in their confrontation with Germany at sea and in the air, suffered losses of 20-25 thousand killed per year, when the USSR on its front lost 1.5-2 million dead in the same year. Accordingly, Germany suffered many more losses on the Soviet-German front than in the fight against the Allies**. The Allied air-sea front and the USSR land front turned out to be too unequal. Therefore, the USSR recognized only the land front in Europe, more precisely, in Northern France, as a real second front. Only there could the Allies divert large German forces and inflict truly significant losses on them.

There is an opinion that our WWII allies could have opened a second front earlier, already in 1942. The publication, in fact, is devoted to the question: how could this have happened?

In the spring of 1942, American headquarters began to insist on a broad Anglo-American operation in northern France this year.

The Americans already had the determination to fight Nazism in 1942. They fully understood the wisdom of a strike across the English Channel from a military point of view: the center of the war was Germany, and the shortest operational-strategic direction to the Ruhr - Berlin lay through northwestern France. They also felt the ethical side of the matter: the Soviet army, suffering huge losses, fetters and grinds the main forces of Germany, while the allies, having enormous forces, inflict only pinpricks on the common enemy ***. And Roosevelt personally told Stalin that the second front would be opened in 1942, and Roosevelt was embarrassed to be the master of his word.

Public opinion in the USA and England not only supported the early opening of a second front, but also directly demanded it. From Roosevelt's message to Churchill on April 3, 1942: “Your people and my people demand the creation of a front that would ease the pressure on the Russians.”

In addition, the Americans were driven by fears that the USSR, without receiving effective assistance, could be defeated, and then Germany would release its main forces and deploy them against the United States.

American resolve did not emerge out of nowhere. The material prerequisites were quite there, military production for the second half of 1942: USA: 19,300 tanks (11,300 medium), 14,700 combat aircraft, 119,600 guns, 194 million units. shells and mines; Germany: 3100 tanks and self-propelled guns, 5700 combat aircraft, 20300 guns, 65 million units. shells and mines As you can see, the United States has already turned around enough.

Where to disembark?

The headquarters went through the options:

Pas-de-Calais: closest to England, but also the site most protected by the Germans; powerful coastal batteries were built here already in 1940.

South of Pas-de-Calais - the section from Boulogne to Le Havre. Pros: here the coast is not so fortified, the width of the English Channel in this place is quite small - within the radius of Allied fighter aircraft, and besides, the landing convoy could cover just such a distance in the dark. Disadvantages: the coastline here is predominantly steep cliffs; the beach strips suitable for landing are narrow and have practically no access to any roads. Further south - Normandy: the coast is more suitable for landing, but is located further from England, which imposes restrictions on the actions of fighters (in 1942 they did not yet have the range of 1944).

Peninsula Cotentin: The peninsula jutting out into the sea was closer to England, and was home to the large port of Cherbourg. Minus: the narrow space of the peninsula allowed the Germans to easily block the troops that had landed on it.

As a result, it was decided to land on Cotentin.

There were problems with the landing, the first obvious one being the landing craft. The fact that the Allies abandoned the landing in Europe in 1942 due to a lack of landing craft is a common theme in many works touching on our topic. For example, a quote from Fuller D.: “In early July 1942, President Roosevelt, greatly alarmed by the fall of Sevastopol and the German advance on Voronezh in order to divert part of the German forces, began to insist on an invasion of the Cherbourg Peninsula in September. But this was out of the question, since the landing craft by this time could only be enough for one division.” You can find a lot of similar places, but nowhere is it said how many landing craft actually existed at that time in specific figures.

Quote from the 12-volume “WWII”: “The United States has also achieved significant success in the construction of the navy. In 1942, 128 warships (4 battleships, 1 aircraft carrier, 8 cruisers, 81 destroyers, 34 submarines), 6,902 landing ships and more than a thousand small ships entered service; 13 ships of various types were converted into escort aircraft carriers.” Let's highlight this number - 6902. These are, in particular:

There was also considerable production of landing craft in England.

There were landing craft. Although, it is clear that it is not on the scale of Overlord.

Landing and landing craft. The relationship between them is actually inverse. Not so: the decision to land was not made because the landing craft had not yet been set up; and so: since there was no solution, the means were not set up. If a decision had been made, then the problem of landing craft would have been made less acute.

Another problem is the lack of combat experience in the US Army. There is a source. amateurs who are very worried about the Americans: why, they have not been fired upon, are not sufficiently prepared, and why throw them into battle. Let me clarify: I am not in favor of throwing Americans into battle unprepared; I am in favor of not treating them as some kind of race, which, unlike others, should be provided with gentle greenhouse conditions.

The campaign in Tunisia is often cited as an example of the unpreparedness of American troops for real battles. The "Bloody Road to Tunisia" is well known. There were difficult battles. But of the real failures during the entire campaign, only Kasserine with 3,000 American prisoners is known. By the standards of the Eastern Front, this is an episode. And the Americans learned quickly. Of the failures, they only had Kasserine. And already under Kasserine, the Americans did not let the Germans lose their success, but immediately restored the situation with counterattacks.

In just six months of the Tunisian campaign, the Allies lost 10,000 killed, including 2,700 Americans. (To complete the picture, it should be added that the Allies had another 30,000 missing, of which 6,500 were Americans, most of them captured during German counterattacks.) Normal losses, if not small, nothing particularly bloody there in Tunisia was. Tunisia has shown that the US Army’s combat capability is normal.

In addition, there were also the British - they had been in the war for a long time, they should have been the majority in the first echelon. The Americans expected to be drawn into the fighting quite gradually.

Well, now the main problem: the landing in Europe depended on cooperation with Britain, and the British, led by the lump Churchill, did not cooperate in a speedy landing. And even the opposite. The British, led by Churchill, wanted to land in Africa, Greece, Portugal - in general, anywhere, just not in northern France.

American authors have the following line: we are simple, honest guys, we were ready to open a second front already in 1942. But the British, those stubborn casuists, veiled the matter. This is roughly the American legend. Of course, you can’t take it at face value, but apparently you can’t take it as completely flawed either.

There is an opinion: American determination is largely explained by the well-known aphorism: until a person begins to do something, he thinks that he can do everything (option: a person can do everything as long as he does nothing). Explanation from M. Weller: a person does not so much overestimate himself as underestimate obstacles that have not yet been tested or are completely unknown to him.

The British managed to test and become very familiar with the obstacles, the main one being the German army. They really didn’t want to land in France to face her again. A struggle between the two lines began.

Initially, the United States put forward a grandiose plan: a large army would cross the English Channel, crush the Germans, and capture a bridgehead that included Paris. But, according to American assumptions, the main forces for this should have been provided by the British, since the US army has not yet been deployed and deployed across the ocean. And only then will US troops arrive (within six months) at the bridgehead captured by the British (in half of France), who will form the backbone of the forces for the decisive offensive into Germany. The Americans, although they put forward the idea of ​​a speedy landing, did not immediately intend to shoulder the brunt of the fighting. It is possible that the British should have sensed some catch here.

During the approval process, it was necessary to cut back on the sturgeon of American plans - to reduce the scope of the operation. This was also required by the situation with landing craft. And the British could not spare large forces. In their opinion, they had extremely little strength****. In addition, there was an urgent need to send large reinforcements to the British army in northern Africa. There, in June 1942, at a very bad time, the British suffered a crushing defeat from Rommel's army.

As a result, a limited version of the landing on the Cotentin Peninsula was proposed.

* In addition to the Germans, there were also Italians at the front in Africa. But the Italians were also on the Soviet-German front; situation as of November 1942: there were 8 Italian divisions on the African front, 10 Italian divisions and 3 brigades on the Soviet front.

** From the 12-volume “History of WWII”: “Of all the losses suffered by the German armed forces in the second half of 1942, 96 percent were losses on the eastern front” - Germany’s losses in the fight against the USSR during this period were almost 25 times higher losses in other theaters of operations.

*** I remember that in the USA there were other feelings voiced by Truman: let them (Russians and Germans) kill each other longer. And, it is clear that not everyone in the United States wanted the speedy opening of the Second Front.

**** “The total number of personnel in the British Army, Navy and Air Force* reached 6.8 million people in the spring of 1942, including 3,690 thousand people in the metropolis; about 4 million accounted for ground forces, which included British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, African and Indian formations, as well as individual Polish, Czech and Greek formations and units. The British Land Army consisted of 54 infantry divisions, 49 separate infantry brigades, an airborne division, a separate cavalry brigade, 12 armored divisions and 9 separate armored brigades.

The Royal Air Force had 4,857 aircraft.

Most of Britain's land and air forces were located in the British Isles. 27 infantry divisions (including 4 Canadian), 16 infantry brigades, 6 armored divisions, 9 separate armored brigades (including 2 Canadian), 303 aviation squadrons were deployed here.

27 infantry divisions, 33 infantry and 1 cavalry brigades, 6 armored divisions and 2 armored brigades, 81 aviation squadrons were located in other theaters of war and in various parts of the British Empire: 15 infantry and 3 armored divisions, 2 armored, cavalry and several infantry brigades - in Africa, the Near and Middle East; 3 infantry brigades - on Gibraltar; 1st Infantry Division - in Cyprus; 4 infantry brigades - in Malta; 6 infantry and 2 armored divisions - in India and Burma; 2 infantry and 1 armored divisions - in Australia; 1st Infantry Division - in New Zealand; 2 infantry divisions - in Canada; several infantry brigades are in South Africa.

In April 1942, 15-16 British divisions took part in combat operations against German-Italian troops in Libya and Japanese troops in Burma.

Despite the losses, the British fleet was considered one of the most powerful in the world. It consisted of 13 battleships, 12 aircraft carriers (including 5 escorts), 60 cruisers, over 200 squadron and escort destroyers and 70 submarines” (from the 12-volume “History of WWII”).

*Don’t forget that this is still an empire.