Game Development - What if operation Sealion had taken place?

You'd need to check anecdotal accounts on this - but I don't think fighters would "race off" to catch up bombers Too fuel-heavy...They'd take off at the time necessary to rendezvous with them, while climbing to their altitude on best economy setting!

 

Personally I would go for area movement, maybe with some larger areas having a greater traversing cost dependent on size that will also affect the likelihood of a naval formation in it being spotted, I would have all naval formations with a "spotted" and an "unspotted" side, large coordinated strikes can only be launched against spotted units but bombers flying a patrol mission may get a crack at anything in their area if they roll a successful spottong attempt. 10miles per hex makes little sense for a naval game though with larger hexes to show the barge movements realistically you need to have them move only on even numbered turns (or even just once every 3 turns!) . IMO areas will reduce counter congestion at and possibly even improve historicity.

IMO for landings regiments are just too large, a single 3000 men regiment is a lot of barges and allocating damage in transit realistically will be too much an "all or nothing" affair, I wouldn't have barge counters, just a "barge available track" and the ships and planes get to shoot directly at the crossing units. Assuming a 10 division invasion force (including the paras), you would get some 100 counters for the Germans at batallion level and 60 or so for the British, possibly acceptable.

I would keep the "aborted" result, as it adds a lot of realism, unless you reduce the number of planes that get to shoot you will need very low hit probabilities to be historical, but most of the planes that fail to shoot are "soft" not "hard" kills.

AFAIK FAA shore based squadrons were not at the same training level as those on the carriers, one of their roles was training replacements, so where not the "first team" though probablyt still better than the run of the mill RAF unit at anti shipping work. Don't know how many were available in 1940, ot where they were located, but in 1942 for the channel dash they managed to scape up very little, I would expect less than 100 FAA planes in 1940, considering rthat most FAA types are hopelessly vulnerable to fighters they will not get committed in the attrition phase.

IMO more than 3 or four sorties per day is unrealistic, fighters defending close to their own airfields may do more but it's more the exception than the rule, how to simulate this with two hour turns is not easy, many planes had 3 or more hours endurance and if going for the ships up North or terror bombing missions will last more than two hours. if you have zone movement you could express range as endurance (number of turns a planemay stay up), so a single engined fighter may only fly one turn missions but longer ranged planes may fly two or more. A one turn rest and reaorganize betweeen missions would probably give you an acceptable number of missions per day. You might give planes a fixed amount of movement points (zones) they can move per turn, with "forming up" costing one movement point for mediun sized strikes and two for large sized strkes and fighter combat costing an additional MP, this could actually allow defending fighters to "strip" the escort from large formations before they reach the target.

I pulled out my copy of TFH, most of the counters are ground units and there are a have a large number of British coastal arty counters and AA units as well. Still the number of British air units is impressive, Hampdems, Whitleys, Battles, 4 types of Blemheims, Wellingtons, DB 7A, etc make for a lot of counters in addition to the single engined fighters.

Looking at the rules one air mission that possibly needs to be added is bombing the radars.




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I need to address this aspect...

"Spotting" wasn't really in the hands of the RAF or Coastal Command - except for the larger sea sreas like the North Sea. The RAF actually flew a small number of spotting mssions OVER the Channel nightly - the so-called "moon missions" Here's a map from Collier illustraitng anti-invasion air patrol routes, you'll note how few are actually IN the Channel area!

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-Defence-UK/img/DefenseOfUK-36.jpg

...and immediately you notice the instructions at the bootom of the page! The "moon" misions were only to be carried out at dusk and into the night...while "Dundee" and "Hatch" were to similarly only be flown once daily or nightly! "Bust" twice daily....and only "Hookos" continuously after dark if there was a moon!

Why so few???

Well, looking at Lavery again - the anti-invasion destroyer flotillas were sailing nightly sweeps along the French and Low Country coasts!

Also - the Auxiliary Patrol of armed motorcruisers and trawlers formed a continuous 600+-strong picket line...

But most importantly is something I ONLY learned about on reading Lavery; the Chain Home LOW radars actually provided VERY accurate surface radar coverage! Trained operators could even differentiate between ships...and buoys, sun reflection on waves, even choppy water! Eventually each CHL station was provided with an RN liaison officer who could match spotted traffic with known movements and convoys, or confirm same with his nearest Flag Officer Commanding. CHL surface coverage was actually SO good that the Army asked for and was given eleven CHL sets to provide coverage at likely landing zones, with a further 15 over the next year into mid-1941!

So - spotting wasn't actually really down to the RAF. By September there was very much a belt-and-braces system in place. BEFORE that, however, there were many horror stories - with the RN not being prepared to guarantee spotting any enemy naval movements, NOR the RAF! But by September the system was far more capable.

 

I hate to say it but you are probably right re area movement. I will probably have to use it to fit everything in and reduce congestion. Spotted and unspotted are also very important and need to be recorded by some means (perhaps flip sides, perhaps markers). I think there might be scope for keeping a unit spotted by use of recon aircraft perhaps you can spend you recon points to either shadow an already spotted unit to keep it spotted or search areas for new units (provided the weather is up to it). Spotting will have to start from scratch the following day perhaps with a modifier if spotted the previous day.

The original reason for 10 miles per hex was to allow the slow 5 knot barges 1 move per 2 hours. I suppose every even move would be manageable or possibly the larger areas could have subdivisions within for barge convoy movement.

With you on the barge available track one for each convoy plus some sort of disruption effect track – if they get hit enough they will spend hours milling about and trying to collect lost tows etc might even have to break into 2 convoys arriving at different times or might just be delayed. I suppose that each beachhead could have a battalion counter track – allowing a finer division of losses but not too many units. As I said previously I am not planning on trying to recreate the whole land battle.

With respect to the 10 divisions, I have a copy of Hitler’s armada by Geoff Hewitt out from the library and it is worth looking at as it provides considerable detail on the German plans and is a bit of an eye opener.

The German plan called for all sorts of units to be sent over including 4th Panzer, 7th Panzer and 20th Motorized infantry division (in the “second wave”). 6 infantry divisions in the third wave and a lot more besides, but looking more closely just at the “first wave” is revealing. 10 divisions are mentioned; one being a para troop division, but how long would they take to get to the beaches?

“The first troops to reach land would be an advanced detachment of 2000 for each beach transported in fast minelayers and minesweepers making the final assault in 8 man army sturmboots and motor boats” so 8000 in the first part of the first wave.

The main part of the first wave would then arrive in the barges and transports carrying “advanced detachments” of the first 3 divisions (6700 men from each division + 250 swimming or sea bed crawling amphibious tanks + some amount of initial supplies presumably) so 26000 Folkestone-Hastings and 20,000 between Brighton and Beachy head ( say 3 divisions) on day 1.

“the final plan for bringing in reinforcements estimated that eleven days would be required to bring the remaining elements of the initial nine divisions after which two further divisions would arrive every four days” (700 spare barges but no –zero- spare tugs and assuming no accidents and nobody is shooting).

I recon that it’s going to be difficult to get the first wave across at all and that after that the channel is effectively closed. I may be wrong but I suspect far fewer German army units will be needed than suggested.

I Agree, this is an important consideration and could probably be accommodated in the CRT table results / the combat resolution procedure quite easily.

I suspect they might have been used to attack shipping regardless of the risks. Agreed they would be very vulnerable in biplanes but coming in at low level for a torpedo attack against dozens of transports would have resulted in death or glory and quite possibly both.

Follow on point – how do the Germans spot incoming British raids without radar? Standing patrols? air recon?

Yes I agree I think 2 would be no problem, 3 occasional and 4 perhaps in special or exceptional circumstances. I’m sure more are possible (as indicated previously) but how likely are these situations? Probably best to avoid the outliers and concentrate on what normally would have been the case.

One turn rest and reorganize in all cases, with perhaps 2 or more turns if damaged/fatigued or lots of other damaged units landing (especially later in the day). 1 or 2 turn missions sounds simple enough and would allow further mission types with inland targets with fighter cover and more distant targets (without).

The mp's would have to be carefully thought through. In order for an Me109 say to be able to take part in a large raid (2mp) and take part in combat (1mp) and get across the channel (2-3 say) it would need maybe 6 mp. But just using 6 mp to move on its own might give too great a range. Need to think about that.

Yes the British bombers must be included although I am thinking they could be parcelled up into fairly big chunks to keep the counter count down. And the radar attacks would be good.

 

Very interesting to hear that the radar could pick up ships.

Sounds like after September any sizable convoy is automatically spotted, but before its all a bit haphazard although with so many pickets and patrols I'm thinking that each zone should have a base detection die roll built it just for pickets.

On a slightly different topic have you heard of operation lucid? An interesting possibility although perhaps difficult to include as it would be a show stopper I think - lowish probability of success, but knockout blow if it works.

 

Some problems...!

1/ the issue wasn't JUST getting forces ashore - it was keeping them supplied too! That means a CONSTANT traffic stream back and forth across the Channel for the duration of ANY land operations. See Fleming for more details, he discusses the logistical issues involved.

2/ Getting those forces "ashore" in those quantities in those timescales DEMANDED the taking of a functioning port because...

3/ There's a forgotten issue with the powered and unpowered barges! One that every author I've ever read seems to neglect...

The barges that had run ashore in the first wave, been grounded, had ramps assembled etc. - had to be refloated by the NEXT tide. ONLY then could they be brought back across the Channel to reload. Once back across on the English side...they STILL had to be run aground and ramps re-assembled etc.! The turnaround of barges for carrying men, vehicles and materiel across the Channel is thus strictly controlled by the tides!

4/ EVERY time a barge or other vessel crosses the Channel it is at risk of attack! The pool of available shipping will therefore ALWAYS be shrinking...

5/ and there's not just "active" attack, there's going to be a huge degree of "passive" risk to German shipping after the first wave! Floating hulks, sunken wrecks in comparative shallows...even floating mines loose from their moorings!

I'm not sure if the Luftwaffe's Freya sets were working by September on the Channel...but don't forget that they'd have to be flying standing patrols over the invasion flotillas and beach head anyway

1/ Swordfish were actually quite resilient against surface AA! It was fighters they were at much rgeater risk from - and even then, their very slow speed gave them somewhat of an advantage over fast fighters! Those lost during Esmonde's attack during the Channel Dash were only vulnerable to fighters when fflying steady on their attack runs!

2/ Not JUST Swordfish! Skuas, Fulmars, Sea Gladiators, Albacores...even Blackburn Rocs!

Historically unnecessary The Luftwaffe ONLY tried these for three days at the beginning of the BoB, and their attempts to blind the Chain Home network were not effective until the morning of the THIRD day...when the order had ALREADY been given to abandon future attacks!!!

And of course - they didn't know about the Chain Home LOW anti-shipping wrinkle!

Operation Lucid...Augie Agar's bright idea was always going to be as vulnerable to mishap as the several attempts were historically ...

But I can't help thinking that the RN could have done a lot more Yes, they sortied at night and shelled barge concentrations on a couple of occasions...but the RAF did far more. I can't help thinking that some sort of "Singeing the King of Spain's beard", Cadiz-style operation would have been far more useful than LUCID...or a decent bombardment like Mer-el-Kebir! After all - they tried it during the Norway Campaign with Suffolk's dash in to shell Stavanger-Sola airfield!

 

I've read that the Japanese after they took Wake asked where the battleship capliber guns were. At first they wouldn't believe that the largest ones there were 5"ers. Shore batteries at close range can be very deadly to ships.

 

One of the problems is that there are fairly significant tides in the channel. Now if you consider that the crossing is likely to take some of the barge convoys over 24 hours it barges whcih loose their tow or even have it damaged drifting around at night are likely to be a significant problem to the rest of them. I seem to recall the Germans planned on the barges traveling in 3 collums with either a tug boat or a powered barge pulling 2 additional barges. In a test the Germans ran the soldiers in one barge swamped their barge by moving to one side becasue another barge was getting too close. Imagine the reaction at night with British DD's and scores possibly 100's of light craft in amongst them.

There are a whole series of threads over on the Axis hiistory forum on this topic. A lot of good data depending on the thread the signal to noise ratio varies quite a bit. One of the largest threads is in the what if area and the title is somthing like the Battle of Britain but over half is related to Sea Lion.

 

I think this system has a lot to recomend it. A couple of changes to the details I would suggest.
1) The Germans practiced a close in escort during this time (as did the RAF I believe and just about everyone else for that matter). That means there is a good chance that attacking fighters get their first pass at the bombers before any escorts get into the game. If the there are enough spitfires going after the escort they may keep the escort totally out of the picture for the intercepting fighters.
2) The bombers should have some defencive fire if they've got any guns as well. Very unlikely to shoot down attacking fighters but they may abort them and have a good chance of negativly impacting thier accuarcy.
3) A formation that has been jumped by fighters will likely be at least somewhat disorganised and less likely to succesfully attack it's targets.
4) A formation attacking a target with a significant AA capabilty will also be less likely to hit it's targets. That was one of the most important lessons of Crete. Several RN vessels endured hours of assault by large numbers of planes and recieved no hits until they ran low or out of AA ammo.
5) Operational losses historically are almost equal to combat losses. This may not hold for a game like this but should be a factor. Knowing that if you send planes up even if they encounter little or no opposition some of them will not be availble tomorrow or may even be permanently lost is a factor. High optempo and combat increase operational losses as well.

As far as dice go do you plan on supplying them or have people use their own? In any case you can get them quite cheaply by the pound from Amazon and other such sources. (This includes both D6 and D10 as well as the others.)

 

Just to add some detail to elements of these...

It took approximately 2/3s of the daylight campaign before the LW's 109s were ordered firmly to provide close escort

In the first stages of the BoB - they flew as "free hunters" -not real escorts but accmpnaying bomber formations waiting for the bombers to bring up RAF fighters THEn they could play...

...and got drawn off, and bombers took higher-than-necessary casualties.

Then they got ordered to provide close escort - and failed to; again, got drawn off far too easily...

But when the 110's disadvantages became quite clear - they were ordered to provide close escort...while the 109s were ordered to provide close escort on them! So EVENTUALLY the Luftwaffe flew a sort of "layered" formation - 109s escroting 110s escorting bombers...

Problem is - this was for bombing raids heading for fixed, identified targets on land; what would happen once the Luftwaffe reverted to its plans for Sealion is something that needs to be culled from the files provided earlier in this thread

Suprisingly - there are at least three examples...two of them on one day/encounter!...of a defensive box-formation downing Hurricanes that had specifically been ordered NOT to enter the bombers' defensive box...and did! Notably, these were all losses to Dorniers, with their slightly heavier defensive armament.

There are IIRC plenty of anecdotal accounts of LW bomber pilots being only too glad to get rid of their ordnance and GTFO! Unfortunately it resulted in a LOT of shortfalls...and lots of civilian targets being bombed...as well as a lot of bad navigation, targets entirely missed etc.. Once bombers were off their course, it seemed remarkably hard to get them back on course again!

 

Thanks for all of the feed back folks.

I need to sit back and digest it all for a bit now and try to come up with some sort of rough outline map + rules + counters. I think one of the hardest will be the map as there needs to be so much on it what with the barge convoy boxes, ports, airbases, holding boxes, sea zones, beachheads etc. I will post something up when I have something worth looking at

 

Another option might be to have a series of "play aids" take the place of the boxes. I.e. a roster sheet for each unit or may be each raid that's not part of the main map and links to a counter.

The navigation problem Phylo mentioned was very real especially at night. The Germans did have a system of radio beacons to direct their aircraft but the Britsih also were able to spoof that system and misdirect them at least part of the time. Weather could also be critical. The German invasion convoys would be fairly easy to spot on a clear moonlit night I suspect. No moon or overcast not so much, fog and aircraft are right out and collisions not at all unlikely especially if the RN and the invasion convoys do engage at night.
Not a number of collisions in the Pacific which sunk or disabled several ships in far less confusing circumstances.

If the German forces make it ashore you'll also need to keep a verty close watch on their supply sitiuation especially artillery ammo.

 

Yes I am planing on play aids. An east and west track for RN reinforcement movement from more distant areas, perhaps a replacement schedule for a small number of replacement aircraft and air crews each day (some form of damage might bump a unit off of the map and onto tomorrows replacements or even the day after representing repair and recovery.

I plan to record German battalions landed on a track and probably supplies landed also.

Looking at how this is shaping up it looks as if the best strategy for getting the most men and supplies across the channel would be for the Luftwaffe to hit the Royal Navy as hard as possible for as long as possible and then for the invasion to go in at night when the RAF could do very little and switch attacks to the RAF on the first day ashore.

Speaking of the map I suppose that I should start with thinking about what the map is there for first:

So here goes:

To show where units and objectives/targets are geographically in relation to each other

To provide space for unit accumulations where required such as ports and airbases.

To provide a means to allow naval vessels to move and restrict that movement (no land movement)

To allow barge convoys to move similarly to naval units (possibly with additional help and movement tracks)

To indicate where bombers and fighter from each side may travel to for raids and for patrols

To record important game variables such as date and time, damage, status and reinforcements
There is also an important aesthetic element that will aid player enjoyment and immersion. There needs to be a visible map of the area of the battle (the board can’t consist of loads of boxes that look like something off the Star ship enterprise regardless of how neat or accurate the system is).

Can you think of anything else?

 

This is kind of what the Germans planned. The problem is they couldn't reach a lot of the RN at least with escorted bombers and they would have been facing significant amounts of AA fire whether or not the raids were escorted. This would also have left the RAF free to engage at their convienence and/or build up strength. Given the demands on the LW it's not clear that they would have improved their position in this way.

Sounds more like a perscription for disaster to me. Look at the confusion at some of the D-Day beaches now consider what happens if you don't have purpose built landing craft and it's dark. Also consider what happened to many of the German barges in the one test run they did. That was in daylight with no opposition.

 

You might want to consider a "strategic" air map that is seperate from the main map. This coud allow airial combat and a bit of fog of war. Especially if raid markers are used (maybe with a rough strength estimate if some form of intel is available).

Night movement of naval forces should also probably make use of fog of war (flipped and dummy counters perhaps) unless or until spotted.

How would the fact that the German intel network in Britain was totally compromised impact things?

 

Here's my first rough attempt at the board what do you think? The Airfleet box boarders need to be thinned down a bit and there are a lot of other things wrong and rough edges etc but what about the basic layout / size / content?

 

Thats very good.....I'd buy it already.

 

Very very nice, I would buy that too,
Some suggestions:
I would move a lot of those tracks to play aids, the map is where you play and should allow for choices as much as possible, few large areas are likely to turn the game into a die rolling contest with little player choices.
Also I would not leave out the possibility of basing units in Norway, they may play a critical role when/if the RN major units enter the North Sea.
And in nitpicking mode:
Cherbourg not Cherbourge
Why not use the historical Luftflotte designations?

 

Yes good point - I will be looking at the player aid cards soon and may move some of the boxes onto them. I might see if there is space for the east and west approach tracks on the map instead

Yes I was planning on including AF5 but as it didn't operate in the area shown on the board it will have to be restricted to the player aid cards. In an ideal world I would increase the map area to include these areas, but the action would be too too dilute in this area to make it worth while.

Yes (Doh !) and yes why not! I did experiment with boxing down to the fliegerkorps level but it was becoming too complex.

 

Another question has just arisen concerning the counter mix. I need to figure out how many raid markers I need.

How many simultaneous raids could reasonably have been mounted in any 2 hour period, by each of the Luftflotten 2/3/5? An operation for these purposes counts as any group of aircraft traveling roughly together with the aim of attacking 1 target (or a group of targets within a small radius)