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Could Operation Sealion really have succeeded?

Discussion in 'What If - European Theater - Western Front & Atlan' started by GunSlinger86, Feb 15, 2014.

  1. FalkeEins

    FalkeEins Member

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    what are you saying, the British didn't have 'Tigers' ? ..the Germans didn't either! Have you some thoughts as to exactly how the Germans were getting these tanks off their barges; they were hardly going to moor up at some jetty and then be individually craned off...assuming they had survived the choppy Channel crossing..
     
  2. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    The Battle of Britain and Sea Lion are two completely separate battles, in my opinion. The RAF could have been wiped out in 1940 and Sea Lion would still have been annihilated by the Royal Navy. Getting an army that was predominantly horse drawn across the English Channel in a bunch of river barges pulled by tug boats which had to be unloaded over the side by cranes was a non starter. One RN destroyer steaming through them at 30 knots would swamp most of them without firing a shot.

    Here is an excellent book that makes the point.

    http://www.amazon.com/Invasion-1940-Battle-Britain-Stopped/dp/0786716185
     
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  3. DerGiLLster

    DerGiLLster Member

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    Carriers? What do you mean by "carriers?" Also can you tell me where you got those numbers? A source would be nice.
     
  4. Triton

    Triton New Member

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    Bren carriers. A lot of the tanks mentioned might be as useful as these:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Tank_Mk_VI
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Beaverette

    And even if they had decent tanks, they didn't know how to use them.
    There weren't enough anti-tank-guns, not enough firearms etc. That's why it was so tempting to cross the Channel in summer 1940.

    The Luftwaffe attacked convoys in the Channel very successfully, even the RN struggled to defend ships against the StuKas.
     
  5. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    What would it mean to Britain if the RAF had been wiped out? Morale collapse? Luftwaffe bombers flying freely? Why were the nazis so hard trying to wipe out the RAF if it did not have any meaning?

    Interesting article:

    https://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/66-67_Gordon.pdf
     
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  6. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    Source : British equipment losses at Dunkirk and the situation post Dunkirk
     
  7. DerGiLLster

    DerGiLLster Member

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    By source I mean by media or print. There are a lot of books and articles on the losses of dunkirk, could you please give me a specific source?
     
  8. USMCPrice

    USMCPrice Idiot at Large

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    I agree to a point. They are seperate, but the success or failure of one did/does influence the overall strategic balance which does change the chances of success for the later.
    One of the prerequisites for Sea Lion was that the Luftwaffe had to have the ability to gain control of the air space over the channel and over the immediate landing beaches. If that was not feasible then Sea Lion was a no-go. So the condition of the RAFand Luftwaffe post BoB does directly effect that parameter.

    Germany's ground force strengths in the battle for France would be a non-factor during the early stages of an amphibious invasion of Britain. Lacking carriers they would not have on call, tactical close air support until such a time as they captured and put into operation airfields in Britain. Germany would not be able to use it's armored maneuver elements like they had used them in France until they broke out of their beachhead.
    They lacked the naval gunfire assets the US and Britain had, and also lacked the doctrine and proceedures necessary to employ it effectively if it was available. Land based artillery would not be available until the beachead had been sufficiently enlarged to allow them to get ashore and be emplaced with sufficient ammunition to allow it's use. I don't think most people appreciate the logistical requirements necessary to employ field artillery. The US had spent the better part of a decade and a half developing these techniques, and had the lessons learned from progressively larger and more complex amphibious undertakings before they attempted Overlord.
    Sea Lion was a pipe dream. It may have looked good on paper to those with no experience in those types of operations, in reality it would have been a great disaster and defeat had it been tried.
     
  9. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    Hi,

    If your post was in reference to my post about Battle of Britain and Sea Lion being separate battles, I didn't mean the RAF winning the Battle of Britain was not hugely important.

    I was suggesting that Sea Lion would have failed even with German air superiority. It would have taken many weeks to stage all the river barges required and many, maybe most, would have been in the channel, which is really open ocean, for many days and they were not seaworthy. There were 4000 horses planned for the first wave. Imagine what it would have been like for non sailors trying to control panicked, sea sick,1000 pound animals packed into heaving barges covered in manure. Then try to unload any uninjured ones over the downed ones with broken legs under fire if you make it to shore. The men wouldn't have been feeling well either.

    The tug boats would be towing five to ten barges each and each train might be a mile or more long. We can assume that many trains would be broken and there was no provision for reattaching loose ones in the channel so any drifting barges, which were low free board, would then be at the mercy of the sea and most likely broach and swamp.

    Some trains might reach the English shore and some of those might be able to be unloaded, but then the whole miles long mess would have to be untangled, reassembled and towed back across the channel by any surviving tugs to try to handle resupply. A nightmare, in my opinion. Germans who didn't drown would be POWs when their supplies ran out. Crossing the channel was not a river crossing.
     
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  10. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    I agree with that. The chances of success would have been greater with German air superiority.
     
  11. green slime

    green slime Member

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    It hardly matters what kind of tankettes the British had, when the German invaders would've had few if any of their own.

    [​IMG]

    Germans had 52 of these, by the time the Opration was cancelled.

    [​IMG]

    The submersible tanks functioned best when they were kept moving along the seabed as, if halted for any reason, they tended to sink into the sand. Obstacles such as underwater trenches or large rocks tended to stop the tanks in their tracks, Their number? 160 Panzer IIIs, 42 Panzer IVs, by the end of August.

    In contrast, the British had:

    June 30th; Infantry Tanks 140 Cruiser Tanks 209 Light Tanks 582 Bren Carriers 2,242
    July 31st; Infantry Tanks 218 Cruiser Tanks 284 Light Tanks 657 Bren Carriers 3,181
    August 31st; Infantry Tanks 274 Cruiser Tanks 322 Light Tanks 659 Bren Carriers 3,784

    (Compare to losses of the BEF at Dunkirk; 100 Infantry Tanks, 184 Cruiser Tanks, 331 Light tanks).

    It matters not, that the British have yet to learn how to use their armour, when the German armour is not going to be more than glorified pillboxs, once they run out of fuel, because there is next to no fuel coming ashore in a second wave.
     
  12. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    I've sometimes wondered what became of the millions of SMLEs from WWI? Were many in storage in Britain, separate from the ones lost by the BEF?
     
  13. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    "Heinz, you will drive your u-tank 50 miles to Dover!"

    "But, but but ........"
     
  14. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    Maybe,but 1 % chance of success still means failure .

    Reality is that even with air superiority,SL was doomed to fail:

    1)On the transport fleet could only transport and land a few batallions without heavy weapons :it would take a barge one day to go to the British coast and to return to its base .

    2) To bring on land heavy weapons and supplies,the Germans needed to capture harbours,and this ,intact .

    3) The KM was unable to protect the merchant fleet

    4)The Home Forces would have eliminated the first group of Germans before the second could arrive

    5) ONE small summer storm and the whole transport fleet was lost .
     
  15. Triton

    Triton New Member

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    Yes, I know.

    For an army with a landforce as powerful and successful as the Wehrmacht of 1940 was, it was difficult to accept that a little bit of water made it impossible to end the war. Even in 1944 after D-Day, officers regret to not having tried it at all cost. Simply because the result and the losses couldn't have been worse than loosing a lot of men and, in the end, the war.
     
  16. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    I think the absolute minimum was 24 hours EACH WAY for the shortest routes, not counting loading and more problematically, unloading. They could only make about 5 knots.

    Another thing I don't think we've talked about yet was how inland waterway and Baltic cargo transport was disrupted by pulling all of the available barges and tug boats for the invasion.
     
  17. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    :)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfEMeJNfzpw
     
  18. KodiakBeer

    KodiakBeer Member

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    What did it take the allies to prepare for D-Day - special landing craft, training, endless recon, enormous amounts of stockpiled logistics. Careful, exacting planning to put ashore everything needed on a timetable that would make a modern air controller go insane. It took two years to put that together and that against a Germany embroiled on several fronts. And even then, the issue was in doubt for 6 weeks; before the breakout insured some degree of success.

    And Germany was going to do that on a shoestring with a bunch of towed river barges? They were going to do that to an island with an excellent road and rail infrastructure that could move every man, gun and can of beans to the front within days? And they were going to do that with the Royal Navy able to sweep through the channel at will? Remember, even if the navy took losses during daylight they could sweep through at night and destroy everything in the water and pound the living hell out of both the launching and landing sites, and still be over the horizon when the sun came up. And don't forget - we're talking about the English channel which is notorious for bad weather. Even with air superiority, the weather would probably keep aircraft of the day out of the fight much of the time, daylight or not.

    It's almost a shame they didn't try. The war might have ended sooner.
     
  19. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Member

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    Two issues with some of the above...

    1/ For Sealion even to have been ordered launched the RAF's Fighter Command had to be so reduced as to no longer enjoy air superiority or local air superiority over the invasion area. This was a specified conditional for Sealion; if this did not occur, no Sealion.

    So what does this actually mean? Well, the options vary from every Eleven Group airfield south of the Thames rendered useless...and in the last week of August and first week of September the Luftwaffe managed a suprising number of temporary airfield closures ;)...to circumstances forcing Eleven group being withdrawn north of London....meaning that in a 1940 where neither the Spitfire or Hurricane yet had drop tanks, THEY would have been hampered by short-duration linger times over the kent and Sussex coasts - just as in 1940 the Luftwaffe were over London. In other words - imagine a Fighter Command hampered combatting the Luftwaffe in the same way that historically the Luftwaffe were hampered fighting the RAF!...

    ....to Fighter Command suffering enough overall combat losses overall to prevent them mustering an effective air defence over Kent and Sussex during Sealion.

    In other words - If Sealion was ordered launched, then the RAF would ALREADY have been defeated effectively. QED. They weren't - so it wasn't :)

    Second issue....

    regarding tanks - it's not a simple case of one set of numbers vs. the other....

    In the last week of August we actually sent well over half our "modern" tanks - our Cruisers and Matilda IIs....to the Delta! It was reckoned in Whitehall that production in the short term, before we expected the Germans to invade, could make up the "losses" (i.e. the departures) in time for the invasion ;) We did - but only BECAUSE the invasion never happened at all.

    Yes, the Germans had 160 amphibious tanks - but that was only the AMPHIBIOUS part of the invasion in the First Wave - the Second and any subsequent waves transferring from the Continent to bring the REST of the German Army's panzers ashore at a captured port. It wasn't to be just a case of "only" 160 amphibious tanks facing "all" the British inventory...

    That inventory included everything from Matilda Is and IIs, Cruisers....and Vickers Lights....to Vickers "Dutchmen", several "India Pattern" lights ( i.e. all pretty obsolete)....to a large number of training echelon tanks that had never been sent to France, to even a scattering of WWI-period "lozenges". But the real problem with the British armour was - what the British planned to DO with them!

    Only 8RTR, as part of MILFORCE was to go anywhere near the putative German invaders on S-Day! By advancing overland from Ashford direction, jumping off at the village of Sellinge, and heading across country to the north of either Hythe or Folkestone.....or directly south to relieve the defenders of the Royal Military Canal. The problem for the defenders of Kent was that there were very few ways for tracked or wheeled armour to actually REACH the invasion beaches because of the geography of the area - a long escarpment running two-thirds of the length of the Royal Military Canal with very very few useable roads down/through it to the shore! Any German forces landing east of Rye were protected by the terrain from being driven into the sea by British tanks - British tanks couldn't actually reach the sea!

    Further to the West, the remaining field-able British tank formations had "hurry up and wait" orders to bring themselves down from their laager well to the rear and "await the development of events", on S-Day. In other words - there were so few actual armoured units, that the British realised it was going to be vital not to fritter them away piecemeal too early, or use them up on S-Day itself....they had to be kept far enough back so that they could intervene anywhere along the coast of Sussex as events developed...but they also had to "hurry up and wait" at their forward holding point so that when they WERE committed, they'd be committed to the best effect ;)

    Which means that no matter what happened - NO British tank was going to be trundling along ANY British beach driving the Germans into the surf on the first day of any invasion; to the east no British tank could get to said beaches....while to the west they weren't to even try on S-Day.
     
  20. Dave55

    Dave55 Member

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    Yikes! RN night operations never occurred to me. They'd also pulverize the sitting duck barges out in the channel.

    Would be a good crab season the next year.

    Edit:

    Most, if not all of the first wave would have started in daylight the previous day and have had to be in the channel all night in order to make England by dawn. Plenty of warning for the RN to hit them after dark prior to landing.
     

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