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No, Pluton escaped, along with most of the Dutch navy. Also keep an eye out for the Fantasque and Surcouf, which remain at large!
 
No, Pluton escaped, along with most of the Dutch navy. Also keep an eye out for the Fantasque and Surcouf, which remain at large!

I hope the Surcouf, true to her name and mission, will operate as a real Privateer and give some nightmares to the German merchant marine!
 
The British were well aware of this activity, and also aware that sweeping efforts could not possibly hope to keep pace.
Ahh I forgot you are using the whole "The British Naval AI doesn't do anything, thus I will assume the Royal Navy is run by retards who just let the enemy do what they want unhindered" approach aren't you?

In reality though I find it very hard to believe that the RN just let Germany spend several month laying mine fields that could only have one possible purpose without doing anything to interfere or make any form of preparation or counter-measure. Five months is enough time to recall every minesweeper from across the Empire and refit dozens of light ships as emergency sweepers. As I said - those mine fields can only have one possible purpose and will be noticed, particularly if your trying to mine up a major port like Great Yarmouth months in advance.

Once they realise what the enemy is doing the Admiralty has to react. Off the top of my head - concentrate mine sweeping on making a clear channel around Great Yarmouth and then keep a flotilla from the Nore Command permanently on station to stop mines being relaid. Given how close you are to home the ships can be lit up like a Christmas tree and fairly well spaced to ensure nothing sneaks past. Yes that may scare off the Germans but the aim isn't to bring them to battle, just to stop them laying mines. Thus one clear channel is maintained for the RN and indeed coastal shipping to use.

I realise this AAR has made a feature of Germany's enemies being passive and very stupid, but surely this is pushing it a bit too far? It reminds me of Napolean's naval invasion schemes pre-Trafalgar; they always assumed the enemy never reacted (except to do what was best for Napolean's scheme) and that everything on the French side went perfectly. We all know how that ended don't we?
 
In reality though I find it very hard to believe that the RN just let Germany spend several month laying mine fields that could only have one possible purpose without doing anything to interfere or make any form of preparation or counter-measure. Five months is enough time to recall every minesweeper from across the Empire and refit dozens of light ships as emergency sweepers. As I said - those mine fields can only have one possible purpose and will be noticed, particularly if your trying to mine up a major port like Great Yarmouth months in advance.

Once they realise what the enemy is doing the Admiralty has to react. Off the top of my head - concentrate mine sweeping on making a clear channel around Great Yarmouth and then keep a flotilla from the Nore Command permanently on station to stop mines being relaid. Given how close you are to home the ships can be lit up like a Christmas tree and fairly well spaced to ensure nothing sneaks past. Yes that may scare off the Germans but the aim isn't to bring them to battle, just to stop them laying mines. Thus one clear channel is maintained for the RN and indeed coastal shipping to use.

Clearing the North Sea Barrage after the work took more than 80 dedicated ships 5 months of working around the clock after the war, with no threat from enemy action.

Given that the RAF has not been able to effectively contest the Channel since late June, and that the Luftwaffe has enjoyed decisive superiority since late summer/early autumn -- the mass of minesweepers plodding out every day to meticulously clear the fields just isn't on the table.

And certainly, yes, the British realized that the Germans were planning an invasion. It appears, however, that they were banking on a spring date, as many of the Reich's leaders were pushing for as well. The big gamble about Loewengrube was carrying it off against the absolute outer limit of the weather window and hoping for the best, rather than waiting to 1937, when the British would be expecting an imminent crossing, and would have had more time to take the countermeasures you suggested.

As it happened, there just wasn't the sense of urgency to take more drastic and risky steps like ordering the entire Home Fleet out of the safety of Scapa Flow to try to interdict the minelayers. Even though RN planners didn't think a German biplane was going to send the Revenges to the bottom, they weren't about to leave them hanging around constantly vulnerable waters with no safe ports for 5 months on end.
 
And now for the replies to the comments that I hadn't gotten to yet...

c0d5579 - Thank you very much! You sell yourself short!

Metroid17 - Thank you kindly, sir. I'll do my best.

Kurt_Steiner (1) - Getting shorter, though.

dublish - As you command!

Kurt_Steiner (2) - You won't see me stopping you. Reciprocity and all ;-)

TheExecuter - Stay tuned!

Atlantic Friend - Strange, that El Pip's the one who's always accused me of selective blindness...
 
Ahh I forgot you are using the whole "The British Naval AI doesn't do anything, thus I will assume the Royal Navy is run by retards who just let the enemy do what they want unhindered" approach aren't you?

Given the HoI2 British naval AI, that kind of is the approach you have to write under if you're going to write an AAR. It's either that or "there was a fortunately timed coal strike/tanker sunk/heretofore-unknown set of German blockships across the harbor at Scapa Flow" that stretches credibility even more than "oh, they'll never get off their backsides, time for tea!"
 
Given the HoI2 British naval AI, that kind of is the approach you have to write under if you're going to write an AAR.
You could do that, OR you could take the other option and not take advantage of AI stupidity, just because the AI leaves you a gap you don't have to take it. A bit of that, making a few deliberate mistakes yourself and the odd bit of savegame editing and you can produce a much better outcome. This is all advice I wish I'd had earlier, I would have written a much better war with Italy for starters.

I think it was AF who gave me this advice; you should bend the game to your writing not the other way round. If narrative or history book is the style you are aiming for then you don't have to (indeed I would say shouldn't) slavishly follow the game.
 
You could do that, OR you could take the other option and not take advantage of AI stupidity, just because the AI leaves you a gap you don't have to take it. A bit of that, making a few deliberate mistakes yourself and the odd bit of savegame editing and you can produce a much better outcome. This is all advice I wish I'd had earlier, I would have written a much better war with Italy for starters.

I think it was AF who gave me this advice; you should bend the game to your writing not the other way round. If narrative or history book is the style you are aiming for then you don't have to (indeed I would say shouldn't) slavishly follow the game.

I think it's a matter of a writer's taste. For myself, I'd have a hard time with that approach. I'd be fine either writing purely from research and imagination or slavishly following the game. But I would personally struggle with a halfway position that hews to game results sometimes and then ignores or alters them when they're inconvenient. I like the challenge of the slavish approach -- it makes me feel more like a historian sorting out what happened than a fiction writer making it all up.
 
I like the challenge of the slavish approach -- it makes me feel more like a historian sorting out what happened than a fiction writer making it all up.
Even when what happened was you took advantage of AI mistakes/inability to get wildly unrealistic results? As I said just because the game lets you do something doesn't mean you have to do it.

I can understand not editing the game, it's taking advantage of known limits/problems in the game engine and then trying to write that up as history that confuses me, particularly (as c0d5579 points out) the least bad explanation you can use is that the enemy were idiots, which wears a bit thin after a while.
 
Even when what happened was you took advantage of AI mistakes/inability to get wildly unrealistic results?

Like four Japanese carriers for the price of one American? Or twenty-two French and Spanish ships of the line sunk or captured for the price of a few thousand British killed or wounded? Or for that matter Case Yellow? Or the Battle of Sedan? Stupid behavior and outrageous good luck happen with disturbing regularity.
 
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Even when what happened was you took advantage of AI mistakes/inability to get wildly unrealistic results? As I said just because the game lets you do something doesn't mean you have to do it.

I can understand not editing the game, it's taking advantage of known limits/problems in the game engine and then trying to write that up as history that confuses me, particularly (as c0d5579 points out) the least bad explanation you can use is that the enemy were idiots, which wears a bit thin after a while.

Therein lies the heart of our disagreement.

Your basis for calling the invasion of Britain “wildly unrealistic” seems to be an a priori conclusion that that island is impervious to invasion. From that premise, you adjust your criticisms accordingly. If an invasion is made without wholly destroying the Royal Navy, you conclude that it’s unrealistic, because surely the Royal Navy would have succeeded in stopping the invasion. If the RN were sent to the bottom, you would (I think it is fair to conclude) say that that in itself is unrealistic, and that I am in the wrong for exploiting game mechanics that work to the disfavor of the old battleships.

The historical fact is that an invasion was judged probable in 1940, and although subsequent wargaming has typically concluded that it would have likely failed, the plausibility of even establishing beachheads was not in doubt. Of course, the key difference between Weltkriegschaft and OTL is that the RAF has been soundly defeated. The complacent Stanley Baldwin is prime minister, not Winston Churchill. The Suez campaign has stripped the British Isles of troops nearly as badly as Dunkirk in OTL, and quite a few of the light warships and destroyers that historically could oppose an invasion have not been built yet. About 200 destroyers that had been constructed by the OTL Sealion risk period are simply not in the picture here.

This leaves the main “wildly unrealistic” point that the battleships have not parked themselves off Calais and sunk the invasion fleet. When I explained that the threat of mines had limited their freedom of action, you concluded that it would be unrealistic to lay that many mines. When I presented you with the math, which explained how a sufficient number of mines were laid, you just shifted to talking about the stupidity of the AI. I've never used "stupidity," as such, as an explanation, and I think you know that. Whenever I do provide an explanation for a point you question, you just seem to shift to something else.

I’m wholly in agreement with you about genuine game exploits, but it sounds like what you really mean by “taking advantage of known limits/problems in the game engine” is that one should never invade England, period, because you believe that for historical reasons that would not be plausible. You’re entitled to your opinion, but I’m more inclined to trust the assessments of Churchill, Ironside, Alanbrooke and most of their contemporaries, who concluded, even given Britain’s much stronger position in OTL 1940 than in Weltkriegschaft, that a German invasion of uncertain outcome was plausible.
 
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Historically Sealion was doomed to fail, because of the basis of everything military: Logistics, logistics, logistics. Even if the RAF had been defeated logistics would have eventually doomed the Invasion.
 
A factor which I have not forgotten, sir. (Welcome back, by the way!)

At this rate I might even have the next update ready by the time we get to the next page of the thread.
 
Glad to be back.

Anyway, my point is that I frequent another forum where the (im-) posibility of the Germans putting troops ashore and if they managed that the viability of the Invasion to sustain has been discussed at length. In fact suggesting that it can be done instantly marks one as a noob and opens one up to ridicule. Once you've seen an actual Historian and many self-taught experts (For whose knowledge of the facts I can vouch) ganging up on someone who suggested it could be done and that the British would have lost, after naming himself Wiking Division as a username was an awesome spectacle.

Coming from that and reading a lot of the source articles provided there I believe that Sealion never had any chance.
 
Armchair General? Yes, I've read those threads to. The baseline of discussion there, of course, is the Sealion of OTL, which differs from this one in the ways mentioned.

Although even in OTL, if Sealion had succeeded, it would not have been through an actual military conquest of the island, but a pressured political settlement early on. The people on AG who I've seen tilting at windmills about Sealion are the ones who envision the Germans winning an in-the-fields-and-in-the-streets type of campaign.
 
Not Armchair General.

Alternatehistory.com


The discussion has been done beyond death all things considered.
 
Suddenly Macksey's Invasion comes to mind.
 
Alternatehistory.com

The discussion has been done beyond death all things considered.
And yet still people try, though sadly having someone pointed at a thread to be proved wrong rather than torn apart there and then is somewhat less enjoyable as a spectator sport.

But that is a different board with a different ethos so probably best to leave such savagings and inconvenient facts where they belong and let this thread carry on without further interuption. :)
 
Hi I was re-reading your awesome AAR when I noticed something a little off in Chapter III: Part XXVII. Are the paratroopers really able to see destroyers 30,000 meters (30 kilometers) away at night even with the star flares and end up receiving accurate fire from 8 kilometers out? I can see 8 kilometers firing range actually... but being able to see them 30 kilometers away is a touch long maybe.