Were the germans wrong?operation sealion

I've seen that one as well (it isn't the first timne he has posted it either). That particular poster has a fixation with Prinz Eugen and in his eyes she can do no wrong.

Are these just ill-informed & illogical postings or is it a case of these people having an underlying wish that Germany had of actually won the war and can do no wrong? 'What If's' are all well and good but at what point does it step over to revisionist history?

 

On the other hand I'm learning a bit looking things up for this one. The mine situation is rather interesting and still not very clear. I do wish he would do a little research. Almost trivial since we've posted a number of links but it's pretty clear he hasn't read them.

 

It was actually growing up watching crappy war movies in which the Germans behaved incredibly stupidly (running headlong into machine gun fire etc) or as a evil caricatures, that stimulated my interest in the history of WW2, to learn about things from the 'baddies' perspective, thus giving a rounder, more realistic picture of the conflict.

I guess perhaps for some people their interest might tip over into borderline glorification of Nazi militarism. Its kind of a grey area and hard to tell where interest stops and obsession starts.

I might be sticking my neck out a bit here, but having an avatar of a person in a uniform bearing a swastika, or even of a known fascist, is too far for me.

I feel rather as if Ive drifted off topic here. Just my thoughts.

 

Tsch tsch tsch,this is terrible..

First off there is no such thing as a fool proof plan,was the plan to defend england any better than the plan for market garden?
How can the posters here be sure the plan to defend england was a good one?,,,put it this way,if market garden was called off at the last minute would the posters who say the RN would have crushed sealion be saying now that market garden would have succeeded,,you must be willing to conceed that the defence of brition might not be as guaranteed to succeed as you would like to think.

Maybe if the german landing force launched at daytime and were immediately spotted,that the luftwaffe didnt attack destroyer bases to support the invasion,that the RN could arrive unmolested or even better still magically teleport to the scene of the crime,that 30 destroyers would be enough to stop a full scall invasion,,then i might conceed that the british may have halted the invasion.

Anyway,back to my origional question,did the germans overestimate the importance of the RAF?


Hess,Hess,Hess,Hess,Hess,Hess,Hess,Hess,Hess,

 

For Real!!although i havent noticed it here at all,

 

All I have to say at this point.....:headbash: :deadhorse: :headbash: :deadhorse: :headbash: :deadhorse: :headbash: :deadhorse:

 

Quote: Anyway,back to my origional question,did the germans overestimate the importance of the RAF?

What are you talking about if I may ask??

The Luftwaffe almost got annihilated during the B.o.B. due to decisive errors on behalf of their "underestimation" of the RAF and the neglection of key issues by the Luftwaffe leadership.

Regards
Kruska

 

What i'm really asking is should the luftwaffe have targeted the RN instead of the RAF?
They went against their own principles,surely the RN was a bigger threat to the invasion than the RAF.Good and all as airpower is it can only achieve so much.

 

It would be very difficult to target the RN, especially before eliminating the RAF. The Luftwaffe lacked the resources and weapon technology to target the RN. Also it's size and spread out locations of it's port would make it hard to do any great damage, and the RAF would not sit by allowing this to happen.

 

But that is exactly what the Luftwaffe did in the initial phase. Go for the convoys and RN ships, even hoping to draw out the RAF.

And we all know how this idea ended right?

Regards
Kruska

 

The Luftwaffe was weakened after the BOB, but it pulled off an impressive feat of arms at Barbarossa 1941 and it remained a reliable (and sometimes decisive) support arm for German offensives until late 1942.

 

I would say that this is true for maybe the first 30 days of that campaign. After that the Luftwaffe fell into a pattern of indecisive attacks on what were almost random strategic targets, marginal tactical support of the ground war and, being used frequently as an emergancy airlift service for supplying troops that had vastly over stretched their supply lines.

It certainly after the opening battles where it destroyed the bulk of the Red Air Force did not contribute decisively to any of the following ground operations outside of airlifts that prevented the stalling of the panzer spearheads.

 

The Luftwaffe was not a significant or decisive strategic force but I was under the impression that the Luftwaffe, when properly massed, was still able to play a decisive role in singular German tactical victories before their assault against Stalingrad. I recently read an account of the battle of Kerch 1942 by Glantz, and it talked of how Luftwaffe medium bombers and Stukas played a key role in disorienting Soviet defensive efforts and countermeasures.

 

I would say that the biggest contribution the Luftwaffe made in Russia was the inclusion of a Flak Korps in each army group. These units had several hundred 8.8cm and 10.5cm AA guns assigned to them and were the primary source of these weapons in fighting. Without the flak Korps German ground forces would have been far short of heavy AA/AT guns.

The problem with the Luftwaffe's aerial component was simply that there was never enough, it was frequently dispersed over the front, the air war strategy had little or nothing to do with the Heer's ground strategy being essentially independent of it, and when the Luftwaffe did make a useful contribution it was an isolated exception rather than the rule.

 

"What i'm really asking is should the luftwaffe have targeted the RN instead of the RAF?"


I wonder if the RAF would have moved squadrons north to counter the threat to Scapa Flow etc and inflicted at least the same losses on the LW.

In fact probably more, because the LW would have been facing far greater ranges. NO possibility of a BF-109 flying from Norway to Scapa and back.


John

 

The RAF maintained squadrons in the north throughout the battle.

13 Group covered the north of England and Scotland. On 7 September, at the height of the battle, they had 7 squadrons of Hurricanes and 3 of Spitfires, as well as some Defiants and Blenheims.

13 Group had rather a quiet time during the battle, mostly dealing with lone recce aircraft and the occasional bomber. The Luftwaffe only sent sizeable forces to the north in daylight on the 15 August, 65 He 111 and 34 BF 110. 4 squadrons from 13 Group intercepted and the Germans lost 8 He 111s and 7 Bf 110s. 13 Group suffered no losses.

At the same time 50 Ju 88s were sent against targets in Yorkshire. They were intercepted by fighters from 12 Group. 6 or 8 Ju 88s were lost (accounts vary).

What a lot of people don't realise is that the RAF maintained a large proportion of their fighter force in the north and west, away from the fighting in the SE. Whilst the Germans committed almost their entire fighter force against the SE, the British only used about half their's to defend the SE.

 

I certainly didn't realize that. And what it means is that the British held substantial air reserves which, in the event of an invasion, could have been quickly moved south and thrown into the balance of forces fighting an invasion battle. That obviously makes the Luftwaffe's task, or rather tasks, even more unlikely of being fulfilled.

As I stated in my first post in this thread, a successful assault landing requires not only air superiority, but also control of the sea surrounding the objective. It's obvious, or should be to any well informed person, that Germany didn't have the ability to meet both requirements in the face of the RAF and RN.

Meanwhile Macker33 natters on about " no plan is foolproof, and how do we know the British defense had a foolproof plan?" comparing it to "Market Garden" of all things! He is correct about battle plans, of course. Had everything gone perfectly for the Germans, and had nothing worked for the British, the invasion might just have been pulled off. But we know that in the history of warfare, that has never happened; there has never been a large scale battle where luck is not fairly evenly distributed. And there were so many demonstrable flaws in Operation Sealion, that plenty was bound to go wrong for the hapless Germans. The disparity of naval forces alone, which of course, Macker33 discounts, would have probably doomed the invasion.

 

Well put "DA", in order or the poorly thought out, and poorly prepared for Seelowe to have had even a 1 in 100 chance of success, everthing from bullets to butter would have had to go perfectly for the Nazi invasion. And everything for the defenders to have gone completely wrong.

Never going to happen, and the Luftwaffe's extremely poor showing against any moving warships though the entire war is discounted somehow, as if they could learn to do something they never mastered just for this to work. Again, never going to happen.

 

Hop,

I was a bit slack in leaving out the word 'additional' to my musings on RAF counter action to a LW threat to Scapa etc.

It would take about a week for the germans to realise they were on a hiding to nothing on attacking anything outside the range of the 109s.


John.

 

I said it before and i'll say it again..if the RN entered the channel it would have been utterly destroyed,there could be no other outcome.

You'll have to excuse me but 32 destroyers cannot destroy an entire airforce no matter what anybody here thinks.
And what could the brits do then without a navy?
North africa would have been lost,the battle in the atlantic would have been lost,

Lets not forget that the british lost in norway despite the RN being there.