Friday 2010-06-25 Dev. update and Discussion Thread

[Bobb4]

Operation Sealion was clearly possible. There are historical records of the movement of barges and other assorted ships from occupied countries that give clear credence to an actual plan that was being implemented.
Would it have been successful, well that is a big what-if.
If one is to look at Japan, the axis certainly had the expertise to carry it off.
If the Luftwaffe had won the battle for air superiority over the UK they could have closed the channel to enemy ships.
The sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse clearly indicate how well the British fleet would have faired with out overwhelming air superiority.
Not saying it would have been a cake-walk but one has to remember that France was a super-power stronger than the UK and it’s population/government quit when it became clear all was lost.
My guess is even a half-hearted landing on British soil would have lead to a British surrender/armistice.

[philip.ed]

Research what it would have taken for an invasion force to invade England as it is quite interesting. To think; crossing the channel would be hard, there is the Navy and even sporadic attacks by the RAF. To be safe from the Navy, the landing scraft would need destroyers to protect them, but they can't travel anywhere near the landing-craft because they would be tipped over by the ships wake. So there would be no close sea-borne protection for the landing craft.
The time to cross the channel in this way was reportedly over 12 hours, and so picking the time of day would be tricky. Plus there is the weather to take into account, and the number of landing craft (and soldiers) needed to make an invasion this way, it really is not feasible in my opinion.
I am more of Zorin's opinion that English defeat would lie in submission, rather than all-out annhialation or invasion
Quite interesting really

[Bobb4]

Not really as many troops as you think...
Remember Dunkirk had just taken place and the British army was in a shambles

"The loss of so much materiel on the beaches meant that the British Army needed months to re-supply properly and some planned introductions of new equipment were halted while industrial resources concentrated on making good the losses. Officers told troops falling back from Dunkirk to burn or otherwise disable their trucks (so as not to let them benefit the advancing German forces). The shortage of army vehicles after Dunkirk was so severe that the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was reduced to retrieving and refurbishing numbers of obsolete bus and coach models from UK scrapyards to press them into use as troop transports. Some of these antique workhorses were still in use as late as the North African campaign of 1942"

Sec State for War dated June 18th 1940 -
The number of men in the Army at Home today, including
Dominion troops is about 1,313,000, made up as follows:-
Field Army Troops ex B.E.F.- 275,000
" " " in U.K. 320,000
Air Defence 151,000
Coast Defence 13,000
Home Defence Battalions 42,6000
Holding Battalions (under disposal instructions to make up Field Force Units) 49,000
Training Units (half to make up Field Force Units) 365,000
Misc. Establishments 59,400
Canadians 22,000
Australians and New Zeaianders 16,000
Grand Total 1,313,000*
The average monthly intake is just under 50,000 under the
National Service Act, and about 27,000 volunteers.

* '
Note. From the point of view of immediate use it must be
realised that apart from the 90,000 about to be called
up, Air Defence of Great Britain and coast defence
amount to 164,000 while some 150,000 of the grand
total have less than two months service. The total
figure includes 45,000 R.A.M.C. , 45,000 RAOC*,
and 130,000 R.A.S.C , who are not trained to fight.

I think based on these figures (not my own research) it would be unlikely the British army would have been in any state to repel even a smallish (300 000) strong Axis force.

Obviously it all depended on the Channel being Royal Navy free

[philip.ed]

Well, it certainly is quite interesting stuff. Then there's the idea of whether the USA would have stepped in or not...

[Zorin]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

Well, it certainly is quite interesting stuff. Then there's the idea of whether the USA would have stepped in or not...

Doing what? With no base east of the Atlantic, sending any ships would have been pure suicide.

[philip.ed]

Maybe sending reinforcement over? Additional air support? I don't know really
It's all speculative.

[Asheshouse]

I don't think there can be any doubt that the Royal Navy would have annihilated any invasion fleet and it would probably have suffered severely in doing so. If anyone questions whether they had the will then read some WWII naval history. The Royal Navy proved time and again that it was prepared to suffer severe losses to get the job done. (examples: Dunkirk, Crete, Malta, Arctic Convoys).

[philip.ed]

There was something a historian once said, and it is something that I agree with, and that is that RAF victory against the Luftwaffe was essential from a morale point of view, but realistically it was never 100% essential to stopping an invasion (unless of course Britain chose to throw in the towel before-hand)

[zapatista]

its uncertain the navy could have been a decisive factor in blocking the invasion, however valiantly it would have tried to delay it

once the germans had air supremacy over the south of england (and most of the rest of england presumably therefore), any major shipping action by the British in the channel would have been easy prey to torpedo attack and dive bombers

whatever glorious action the British navy had in the previous locations mentioned (except for dunkirk which was a special case, because the germans largely delayed their final push including massive air commitments on channel shipping and evacuating troops on the beaches), the British navy in those other events was able to have those success only because neither force could have a significant permanent number of planes over their enemy, or have exclusive air dominance)

iirc wherever navy action was a dominant in ww2, it almost always meant it was far out of reach of enemy lands (except of course in the pacific where the aircraft carrier strategy was decisive in naval battles, but even there yet again whomever had air supremacy or dominance over enemy shipping, it could pretty much sink them at will)

i more or less concur with the current main view of history, Brittan might have "won" BoB, but it was largely because of german mistakes (not constantly targeting radar, switching from enemy airfield targets to civilian terror attacks etc..). the 6 months delay it caused in a potential invasion also allowed the evacuated troops to get reorganized, and then potentially be able to repel the invading forces (also uncertain, but more plausible then the navy doing it on its own).

[Ernst]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

There was something a historian once said, and it is something that I agree with, and that is that RAF victory against the Luftwaffe was essential from a morale point of view, but realistically it was never 100% essential to stopping an invasion (unless of course Britain chose to throw in the towel before-hand)

I think it was a draw, not a victory. Germans simple decided to not go on. In a moment the RAF was almost depleted and ll not survive another day until Hitler 'geniality' decided to stop attack RAF facilities and start to attack citties and civilians. This give a breath to the almost dying RAF.

Another strategic failure was not capture Malta and deny allies of resconstitute their forces there. In the end I think that luftwaffes had not the effective to battle in so many fronts.