Assuming the Germans had been smarter in the Battle of Britain (focusing on specific targets as opposed to causing some damage all around, then giving up and bombing London), could the naval invasion of Great Britain be a success? What about Northern Ireland?
Successful Sealion?
- Thread starter Snowstalker
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The really, really short answer is: as long as the Royal Navy has anything floating, Sealion is a failure.
The RAF can be moved north to recover, while this would concede the Channel to the Germans, it would still be able to contest England proper and air dominance is key to success.
The Germans don't have landing or transport craft with which to either land or supply the invasion force. The German Navy isn't able to even challenge the Royal Navy, let alone eliminate it.
On the ground they'd have a chance, provided they strike fast after Dunkirk (or Dunkirk is more of a disaster). If they take too long, the British recover and rearm and an invasion force faces at the least an Army Group within a day or two of unloading.
That's the short answer, you can find longer debates around this board.
Alternatively, there is the ASB forum, where the Kriegsmarine can be wanked to epic proportions at the snap of a finger.
In case you are freaked out by the response, you should know that Sealion is sort of a pariah topic on this board. It is generally referred to as "the unmentionable sea mammal."
Sealion, no. But I'm not an anal intellectual enough to reject the idea of an invasion of Britain itself as impossible. But the plan for Sealion as that idea for invasion was just too "yucky".
Would paratroopers have been of any use? They worked (albeit barely) in Crete, after all.
It isn't physically possible.
As long as the RAF or the Royal Navy exist (and the Germans have no way to eliminate either), any cross-channel invasion is a non-starter. The germans don't have the ability to get troops across, the ability to resupply them once they are across, no cohesive plan for what the troops should do once they get there or an organized command to work that out, no real preparations to speak of, and no ability to break out from their beachheads.
To give you an idea of what it would have been, Sandhurst has wargamed the scenario several times. Each time, Seelowe fails miserably.
A few helpful links. the first two are old news on the forum. Each takes a different approach, but both describe why sealion was impossible in different ways. The third is a comparison of Operations Overlord and Sealion, which highlights just how difficult a contested amphibious invasion is and why the germans cannot effect one. Finally, I attached a synopsis of one of the aforementioned wargames, where the germans are given a few breaks and still fail.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070504034219/www.flin.demon.co.uk/althist/seal1.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20070504051527/gateway.alternatehistory.com/essays/Sealion.html
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/sealionvsoverlord.aspx
http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/seelowe.txt
Basically, Sealion is so implausible that it is a joke on this forum.
Not really. Crete demonstrated that Paratroopers are going to take heavy loses jumping into a contested zone, especially without heavy weapons and not used on individual targets. The actual plan for the use of Fallschirmjager was terrible. No support, confusion between services on where they were going, no escorts or resupply, and a terrible drop zone.
Nobody is rejecting the idea of invasion. People reject the chances of it succeeding.
Crate is not best comparison. On Crete paras were ment to take the whole island mostly by themselves (withlimited support by another set of light troops). aras on their own can succeed only at great cost, they have to be used as a support for ground troops which relieve them in space of double digit hour time frame
I always thought that the invasion of Scotland from Norway was a badass idea.
Or constructing massive tunnels under the Channel from Calais to Dover.
Or constructing massive tunnels under the Channel from Calais to Dover.
Just adding to what Aktarian and Atreus have alread said here
Crete is a good example of why paratroopers would be a disastrous failure. The drop zones were all sealed off very quickly. Unfortunately, due to a misreading/misunderstanding of the Ultra inteligence, Freyburg thought they were a feint and wouldn't release powerful formations gaurding the coast to crush them. Compound this with the catalogue of other errors and the fallschirmjs got very lucky, in the sense that any of them survived at all
Also, at Crete the Luftwaffe had total air superiority, this would most certainly not be the case in an 'unmentionable seamammel' situation.
Crete is a good example of why paratroopers would be a disastrous failure. The drop zones were all sealed off very quickly. Unfortunately, due to a misreading/misunderstanding of the Ultra inteligence, Freyburg thought they were a feint and wouldn't release powerful formations gaurding the coast to crush them. Compound this with the catalogue of other errors and the fallschirmjs got very lucky, in the sense that any of them survived at all
Also, at Crete the Luftwaffe had total air superiority, this would most certainly not be the case in an 'unmentionable seamammel' situation.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Thing is, we'd see it coming from a mile away. We had extensive contacts in the Norwegian resistance (up in Orkney, where some of the family's from, I've seen the prow of one of the boats used to ferry personnel and information over the North Sea) and the Germans can hardly conceal something so big as an invasion fleet.
So we'll sail out (they had tiny surface combat units, and of course Scapa Flow, where the fleet's at, was right there) and blast them to pieces, most likely. Even if they do somehow reach the shore, what then? There were defences in place on the east coast (you can still see the tank-traps in Fife), and we'd have plenty of time to prepare. There's also very little on the east coast of Scotland. Moderately important centres at Edinburgh and Dundee, and a lot of hills.
Another thing they couldn't possibly conceal. One depth-charge, boom!
You can't get to a successful invasion of Britain from the German situation as of late June/early July 1940. Period. What there was of a German navy was in shambles after losses in Norway. German paratroopers were in tatters in the aftermath of their losses in Holland. The British had the bulk of their army as evacuated from Dunkirk. Given trained manpower, the Brits could reequip their army from US and local sources fairly quickly. The Brits had radar as a force-multiplier for fighter command. The Germans had neglected naval aviation. No working airdropped torpedo as of the summer of 1940. No really appropriate anti-naval aircraft.
The Germans had not really considered Britain a potential enemy until about 1938, and hadn't developed a thorough understanding of how the British economy worked or where it was vulnerable.
To get a successful German invasion of Britain you would have to at the very minimum go back to April 1940 and avoid a lot of the German losses in the Norway invasion and the heavy casualties to their airborne in Holland. Then, assuming that the German victory in the Battle of France didn't get butterflied away, you would need the Germans to trap nearly all of the BEF at Dunkirk.
That still doesn't take away the RAF or the Royal navy. It does mean that if the Germans do manage to get troops ashore the British wouldn't have much to dislodge them. On the other hand, having total naval superiority means that the Brits could bring battleships in at night and pound any German bridgehead within 20-30 miles of the ocean with firepower that is a large multiple of what the Germans could initially respond with. The Germans wouldn't have any counter to British ships coming in at night for bombardments.
Would the British keep their nerve if they didn't have much in the way of ground forces to oppose a German invasion? Under Churchill they probably would have. Under Chamberlain they might not have. On the other hand, the Brits did have some access to Ultra, and that would have told them how unprepared the Germans were to invade. Take that away, along with the bulk of the BEF, and give the Germans back their naval and airborne casualties--And the Germans could still only win through a British moral collapse, not through a successful invasion.
The Germans had not really considered Britain a potential enemy until about 1938, and hadn't developed a thorough understanding of how the British economy worked or where it was vulnerable.
To get a successful German invasion of Britain you would have to at the very minimum go back to April 1940 and avoid a lot of the German losses in the Norway invasion and the heavy casualties to their airborne in Holland. Then, assuming that the German victory in the Battle of France didn't get butterflied away, you would need the Germans to trap nearly all of the BEF at Dunkirk.
That still doesn't take away the RAF or the Royal navy. It does mean that if the Germans do manage to get troops ashore the British wouldn't have much to dislodge them. On the other hand, having total naval superiority means that the Brits could bring battleships in at night and pound any German bridgehead within 20-30 miles of the ocean with firepower that is a large multiple of what the Germans could initially respond with. The Germans wouldn't have any counter to British ships coming in at night for bombardments.
Would the British keep their nerve if they didn't have much in the way of ground forces to oppose a German invasion? Under Churchill they probably would have. Under Chamberlain they might not have. On the other hand, the Brits did have some access to Ultra, and that would have told them how unprepared the Germans were to invade. Take that away, along with the bulk of the BEF, and give the Germans back their naval and airborne casualties--And the Germans could still only win through a British moral collapse, not through a successful invasion.
Everyone groans when the question of Operation Sea Lion is raised for the umpteenth time, but then lots of people pile on with comments anyway--because the subject is endlessly fascinating.
The Germans could not have pulled off Sea Lion without starting to plan it and building a huge fleet of landing craft, more surface warships and many more planes as of about 1936. But if they had started doing this, it would have freaked out the Brits and they would have started seriously preparing for war, including building up their army, bringing new fighter planes on line more quickly, etc. (think 3,000 to 4,000 Spitfires and Hurricanes by the spring of 1940).
Butterfly effect? The Brits are vastly better prepared for war in 1939 and would already have taken a hard line against German expansionism, like not allowing them to take over Austria and Czechoslovakia. And the Germans, by putting their resouces into preparing to invade England, would be less well prepared for a war in the low countries and northern France. And Mussolini would stay out of it, since the Brits would have some scary tanks and planes, lots of them, in Egypt.
But the idea of preparing in 1936 for an invasion of England is so screwy that even Hitler wouldn't have chosen that as the best allocation of resources. So no, the only way Sea Lion could have worked OTL is as a bluff to get the British to sue for peace BEFORE any invasion was attempted. That might have happened if Lord Halifax had replaced Chamberlain. So the question becomes a political one rather than a military one.
The Germans could not have pulled off Sea Lion without starting to plan it and building a huge fleet of landing craft, more surface warships and many more planes as of about 1936. But if they had started doing this, it would have freaked out the Brits and they would have started seriously preparing for war, including building up their army, bringing new fighter planes on line more quickly, etc. (think 3,000 to 4,000 Spitfires and Hurricanes by the spring of 1940).
Butterfly effect? The Brits are vastly better prepared for war in 1939 and would already have taken a hard line against German expansionism, like not allowing them to take over Austria and Czechoslovakia. And the Germans, by putting their resouces into preparing to invade England, would be less well prepared for a war in the low countries and northern France. And Mussolini would stay out of it, since the Brits would have some scary tanks and planes, lots of them, in Egypt.
But the idea of preparing in 1936 for an invasion of England is so screwy that even Hitler wouldn't have chosen that as the best allocation of resources. So no, the only way Sea Lion could have worked OTL is as a bluff to get the British to sue for peace BEFORE any invasion was attempted. That might have happened if Lord Halifax had replaced Chamberlain. So the question becomes a political one rather than a military one.