I think Max Hasting's assessment was even less sanguine about the likely actual impact - destroying Taffy-3, or even all the Taffys in Leyte Gulf, would not have done much to delay the final result. I'm given to agree.
Was Sea Lion possible?
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I think Max Hasting's assessment was even less sanguine about the likely actual impact - destroying Taffy-3, or even all the Taffys in Leyte Gulf, would not have done much to delay the final result. I'm given to agree.
The Luftwaffe could not prevent the RAF from operating for a few months in one region of the country. For the duration of the Battle of Britain the number if aircrew and aircraft available to Britain actually increased and there is little evidence that attacking the airfields seriously impeded the ability of the RAF to continue fighting. The Luftwaffe on the other hand was taking losses that it could not sustain.
On the 25/6/1940, Germany was not in a position to launch Sea Lion, nor could it create a position where Sealion was possible. Preparation had to start way before the fall of France
Because they're what the Germans actually planned to use in the operation. The Germans never had any plans to create proper assault craft and if they had it would need to be started way before France fell.
The thing about driving to from Berlin to Moscow is that you don't have to ferry reinforcements and supplies over the sea past one of the largest navies on earth.
I never disputed the Germans could land some troops. I disputed them landing enough troops in fighting condition and continuing to supply them long enough to force Britain to surrender. The same Wargame you're repeatedly referring to concluded unanimously that the troops that landed would be left without reinforcements/supplies and annihilated. None of the umpires, including one Adolf Galland who was actually a Luftwaffe pilot during the Battle of Britain, gave any indication that supplying the invading forces entirely by air (or air and submarine) was even vaguely conceivable, nevermind a complete certainly as you indicate it would be
Not really, there are plenty of instances of allied failures, or situations the allies could have failed in. It's just that in ideas such as Sealion or invading Australia which are necessary to seriously shift the course of the war for gameplay purposes, are pretty unfaesible in reality
Can I get a rundown of the list of assumptions we have for your invasion plan? So far you're assuming
1) The Germans magic up a flotilla of tank and infantry landing craft in a month or two after France falls
2) The entire RAF is somehow prevented from operating over the heartland own country for several weeks
3) The Germans land several divisions, including armour with minimal casualties
4) The Germans have no logistical issues despite relying almost entirely on air resupply for an overseas armoured offensive
5) The 26 or so divisions the British had available in Sept 1940 are somehow unable to defeat 1/3 their number.
Did I miss anything?
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Now, I'm firmly in the camp of 'IRL, Sealion isn't happening' and 'in-game, it's going to be very difficult, and probably only possible with exploits or with some kind of whacky diplomatic set-up', but what about this potential....
Early on, Germany plays 'nice' - Anschluss and Sudetenland, but then pretends its all good. Keeps peace with USSR and France - if possible, gets USSR or France (preferably USSR) in Axis. However, they convince Japan to attack the DEI and Malaya in '38 or '39, drawing a large part of the RN and the army/air force to the Far East. All the while, they've been building amphibious craft and have been lucky enough for the UK to not notice. Get Italy in the Axis as well.
Then, instead of attacking France, the opening strike of the European war is a naval invasion of the east coast, a decent port without a huge city that'll be a pain to pacify, probably. Still a long shot, but with a lot of the RN and Army off in the Far East, there's a chance of getting a bridgehead.
Very much a fanboy wank-fest, but possibly feasible in-game? Even without the USSR and and France on-side, if the RN is losing ships to the IJN (which will also be losing ships, but it'd be a bit of a fight) and the KM and RM were working together, there may just be enough time for Germany to consolidate before the RN comes back and causes trouble. Still a long shot though.
It's possible to see the French coast from the English coast - and the Brits (like the Germans) had people watching the coast around the clock. A night operation wouldn't have been a surprise.
Early on, Germany plays 'nice' - Anschluss and Sudetenland, but then pretends its all good. Keeps peace with USSR and France - if possible, gets USSR or France (preferably USSR) in Axis. However, they convince Japan to attack the DEI and Malaya in '38 or '39, drawing a large part of the RN and the army/air force to the Far East. All the while, they've been building amphibious craft and have been lucky enough for the UK to not notice. Get Italy in the Axis as well.
Then, instead of attacking France, the opening strike of the European war is a naval invasion of the east coast, a decent port without a huge city that'll be a pain to pacify, probably. Still a long shot, but with a lot of the RN and Army off in the Far East, there's a chance of getting a bridgehead.
Very much a fanboy wank-fest, but possibly feasible in-game? Even without the USSR and and France on-side, if the RN is losing ships to the IJN (which will also be losing ships, but it'd be a bit of a fight) and the KM and RM were working together, there may just be enough time for Germany to consolidate before the RN comes back and causes trouble. Still a long shot though.
It's possible to see the French coast from the English coast - and the Brits (like the Germans) had people watching the coast around the clock. A night operation wouldn't have been a surprise.
The craft they had were barely capable of crossing the channel in ideal weather conditions. Extending the journey length by several hundred miles and length by tens of hours, crossing the Bay of Biscay would be certifiable lunacy
Now that's interesting. Trying to think where'd be a suitable landing zone. Somewhere around the Tyne/Tees region maybe? Major port facilities and a chance to cut Scotland off from the rest of the country?
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Not really no. The Japanese neither had the resources nor the desire to take Hawaii. Most of Japan's land forces were tied to the Chinese front or the invasion of SEA and Indonesia. Japan was literally operating on a shoe-string that was pulled nearly to the breaking point. And Japan considered SEA and Indonesia the important front for attaining resources such as oil in order to maintain their war in China. The war against the US was merely a means to that end in order to capture the Philippines and destroy the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Capturing Hawaii would be a move in order to slow down any advance by the US and would ignore their main reason why they attacked Pearl Harbor: To make a decisive, war winning defeat of the US Navy.
Any attempt to capture Hawaii would effectively be admittance that the war would be long and thus unwinnable. The Japanese wanted a short war with the West, not a long one.
Yes, one person can perhaps swim the Channel at the Dover Strait. But 130,000 people - 13 divisions plus support troops plus supplies plus ammunition plus equipment plus naval escorts - do not just walk into the water in unison and swim across. One person can just walk down a road; an army needs planning and experience in making a march or it descends into chaos as units accordion (stop/start/stop/start) or turn down the wrong roads. Moving a mob is hard and it is time-consuming; that's why armies invented bureaucracy. Getting a lot of men into boats is hard and time-consuming and that is why river-crossings are so challenging.
An amphibious operation is perhaps the most difficult of all military maneuvers - I'd include a fighting withdrawal as less difficult - and it needs to be planned, organized, rehearsed and then carried out like a piece of complex choreography. It took the Allies years - years - of practice in England to work out how to marshall the troops, load the men and gear and stuff on the boats in precise sequence, and organize when the boats and ships sailed and in what order. And D-Day was still chaos on the beach in some places - hell, some of the troops couldn't even land on the right beach.
Vukodev, the standard Allied landing craft - the Higgins boat - was one of the most insightful pieces of genius of the War and is usually listed on any top-ten or even top-five list of war-winning things. As it turns out, the Kriegsmarine did put some resources into developing a landing craft. They built 2 - yes, 2 - before the war and they were complete failures. Germany said they were going to use tugs and river barges because that's all there was - not because it was a viable solution, but because the dictator said 'find a solution' and didn't ask, 'Will it work?'. Germany did not build landing craft for SeaLion because they didn't know how at the time. As to the docks... the Allies built artificial harbors at Normandy. They used enormous caissons of concrete, old warships and freighters and even brought their own pipeline. By contrast, Germany was hoping they could use a fishing pier and get petrol at the village garage.
Of course, if you commit Bismarck, the Scharnhorsts, the pocket battleships and the cruisers to SeaLion you can build a nice breakwater if you can beach them before they sink.
Look, the US Marine Corps started getting serious about amphibious warfare in the late 1920's-to-mid-1930's. They put their total resources into it, made it their reason for existence, developed a doctrine, planned the equipment and procedures and the rest... and the first amphibious landings (Guadalcanal and Torch) were catastrophic screw-ups that would have been a disaster against organized opposition. Dieppe was better in that it showed how very, very far the Allies still had to go to get good enough to even think about trying it. And even in the late-war phase at D-Day, units got confused, the beaches were a mess and the supply situation was total chaos for days and weeks after. Getting right just one thing - the combat-loading of supplies - took several tries and tens of thousands of casualties before they got it right, and the Pacific island invasions never did solve the problem of unloading the cargo ships in a timely manner.
Amphibious landings are not simple. I get that the Soviets pulled one off and my hat is off to them, but SeaLion was going to be bigger, more complicated, more contested and much - much - more chaotic than crossing the Black Sea at Kerch. From the Wiki: "Two days later at Yenikale, over 4,400 men of the Soviet 56th Army (landed were units of 2nd and 55th Guards Rifle Divisions, and the 32nd Rifle Division), enjoyed massed artillery support from positions on the Taman Peninsula and established a firm beachhead which the German V Army Corps and Romanian 3rd Mountain Division were unable to defeat. By 11 November, the Soviets had landed 27,700 men in the Yenikale Beachhead."
Let me point out that moving 4400 men is very different from moving 130,000. Moving 28,000 men in ten days does not mean you can move 130,000 in one. If you land 4400 Germans at Folkestone the police will arrest them or the little old ladies at the tea-shop will club them into submission with their umbrellas. I mean... this is just not reasonable.
And have we even answered which SeaLion we're talking about? The Army wanted 13 divisions moved over a broad front, the Navy said maybe 3 on a narrow front, and neither would agree to accept the other's plan. So... the Army was refusing to go unless they could take twice what the Allies used on better-defended beaches at Normandy! And the Navy had enough barges to move a quarter of that, if the Royal Navy and Air Force stayed away and the sea didn't get too rough. It's fantasy.
No, it's a recipe for the biggest Allied propaganda coup of WW2, a catastrophe that would rival 6th Army's surrender at Stalingrad and cost Germany the paratroops and the best of her army, the cream of her air-force and the rest of her Navy. Britain should have been begging Hitler to try it. That sort of reverse puts an end to Barbarossa for three years and likely five, or it gets Hitler put out of a job.
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GB sank the French navy at port before the Germans could use it for their own ends. I think that the Kreigsmarine, with a lot of effort and planning, could have used these French ships to provide the necessary cover for an invasion force, assuming that they could achieve total air superiority and did not let the BEF escape at Dunkirk. Whatever the Germans landed would have been in pretty bad shape, but not nearly as bad of shape as whatever the British home guard could have mustered without being able to evacuate their professional soldiers at Dunkirk, which only happened because Hitler did not permit the army to go in for a kill blow and instead had the Luftwaffe take a wack at them.
What John Smeaton might look like:
A battalion of doughy 18th Century civil engineers? I suppose they could build lighthouses and canals out of the panzers the Germans bought. Pretty scary, to be sure.
It's amazing how people will just repeating this myth in threads after it's already been addressed.
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The ships that were in Algeria? How exactly were the Germans capturing them?
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Paratroopers obviously. Germany should have made put the entire Wehrmacht under Luftwaffe control if they were serious about winning the war.
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Well they could retrain their whole army as paratroopers and build only transport plane. Think millions of paratroopers landing in a country in a few days, ultimate form of blitzkrieg
What's better they wouldn't even need to wait until the battle of France was over to invade England. Just keep the low countries neutral, fortify the westwall and go straight for London. They'd never see it coming. Then after the paratroopers take over Britain you have the perfect island base to launch a sneak paratrooper attack on France. From there you launch a paratrooper assault on the unsuspecting soviets.
I hope there is a Zeppelin mod on day one. I saw that some guy has already started making 3D unit models, so hopefully some airship models get made as well.
Germany should definitely have a Zeppelin fleet re-building national focus.
Germany should definitely have a Zeppelin fleet re-building national focus.
Forget the no armoured car controversy, the absence of Airborne Battleship Crew Brigades is game breaking.
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Yet D-Day was a complete surprise, at dawn, with a parachute drop the night before.
Through one of if not the most complex deception plans ever in the history of the world convincing the Germans that the Normandy invasions were a distraction and that the real thrust would come at Calais.
The Germans knew the ships were there, they just thought they weren't the real thing.
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Exactly
Operation Fortitude was possibly the greatest example of human deception of all time. A fake army with dummy encampments that had lights installed as to make them look inhabited, dummy landing craft, travel restrictions across southern England, double agents and fake radio messages, bombing raids launched to attack places of little military value (calais was flattened by the RAF). The effort the Allied forces put into pulling the wool over the eyes of the germans was staggering.
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