ATL - Successful OP Sealion campaign

If Hitler had neva invaded the USSR in 1941, and Luftwaffe bombing raids continued against the airfields decimating the RAF - how would the campaign of Operation Sealion have been likely to happen? I aim here to build up a possible timeline of events at campaign level of (a more or less successful) Operation Sealion for a wargame campaign. Heres a possible example to get u started:

Early - mid September 1940
Kreigsmarine attempts blockade of S.W. Britain. Britain brought to the edge of starvation. Widespread rioting leads to declaration of Martial Law. Battle of Portsmouth leads to a Royal Navy breakout and the blockade is broken as British fleets are recalled from across the Empire.

Late September 1940
RAF effectively destroyed by Luftwaffe air raids and shortage of spare parts due to the blockade. Elements of the Fallshirmjager capture key airfields in the South of England. Japanese take the opputunity presented by the withdrawal of the British colonial fleets and seize British colonies in the Far East.

Early October 1940
First seaborne landings at Dover and along the East coast from Norway and France. Initial landings repulsed by use of chemical weapons (eg. posion gas) on the beaches.

Late October 1940
Failure of Seaborne operation leads to capitulation of parachute forces in Southern and Central England. U.K. and U.S. demand immediate withdrawal of Japanese forces from the Phillipines. Brief respite allows for the dispatch of a small British Task force to re-establish control of Far Eastern colonies.

November 1940
U.K. appeals to USA for aid. Congress refuses direct intervention in Europe but approves a lend-lease scheme. Luftwaffe bombing campaign resumed. Italy expands territory in West Africa due to weakening of British colonial Egyptian forces and fleet. Ease in supply shortage leads to repeal of Marshall Law.

To be continued after more thorough research...

Why didn't the RN sink everything?

For a start, the RN would have been under tremendous aerial pressure, which would have taken its toll. Secondly, many of the RN's ships were on convoy duty, and thirdly, theRN high command at the time of z nominal OP Sealion, was in the midst of near anarchy!

exactly as andy said. At the time of Operation Sealion the RN would have been incapable of preventing blockade. However, when RN vessels are recalled from the Empire the Kreigsmarine would inevitably have cracked under the pressure of numerical superiority.
As for air cover nearly round the clock bombing raids on key airfields persisted until 1941 wen they changed to target population centers. At this point the RAF were on the point of collapse.

In fact, now that I think about it, wasn't it only teh southern squadrons that were on the point of collapse, with the northern ones being held back for the invasion?

I think you have to check on how the luftwaffe did against ships in 1940, as well as the size of the Kriegsmarine.

Also, isn't it umm, risky, to sail a massive armada across the channel in august?

Actually, as the rhine barges used were important to germany's war machine, this sounds like a win for britain. capture ten divisions, cripple the industrial base of the reich, prove the British army can win...

Sealion may very well shorten the war.

"“Is not concerning itself with the question of England. Considers execution impossible. Does not know how the operation is to be conducted from the southern area"-Germany's Generla Staff

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/operation_sealion.htm

http://www.flin.demon.co.uk/althist/seal1.

http://gateway.alternatehistory.com/essays/Sealion.html

You forget...the 'Northern Squadrons' were a fantasy - 90% of our air power was in the south, with very little fighter power going to the north. They could have done little to help stop an invasion.

Andy said:

You forget...the 'Northern Squadrons' were a fantasy - 90% of our air power was in the south, with very little fighter power going to the north. They could have done little to help stop an invasion.

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Lack the time to argue that, still awaiting your responses to points already raised.

Even if Gorillas runned the RN, the Kriegsmarine had no tools to fight them! They had too little ships, while german airforce was expectionally bad in scoring against ships...

Yeah, there're about a million reasons how Sealion could of never worked. But I guess it's best summed up by Mr. Ian "THE" Alternate History guy himself in his little essay in http://gateway.alternatehistory.com/essays/Sealion.html

Successful Sealion?

About the only way Sealion could have succeeded was if the Germans had some clue as how to conduct an decent amphibious action. Norway was pure luck. The invasion of Norway, if conducted against a determined & ready enemy, like the UK, would be doomed to failure. And considering the main tactic of the Kriegsmarine was to simply sail into British ports & take them intacted would have been a thorough disaster as well. Then there's the problem with neutralising the RAF, not to mention the RN. Furthermore, the way the UK Army was positioned in readiness for an invasion, would have ensured that the Germans would have lost at least 8 divisions for nothing.

At lot of this last part, the army, is important & is often forgotten in a lot of discussion over Sealion. The Germans, without doubt, had control of the air around August-September 1940 over the Channel I think it's fair to say. The naval control is important, but although the RN had the surface ships, they lacked U-Boats &, needless to say, airpower where it mattered. In all likelihood, the Germans probably would make it to the beaches. Alas, their plans were hopeless. Attacking Dover would have been suicide. Likewise, their attack to the south towards Folkestone & Hythe would have been no better. Don't forget the Germans couldn't bring much artillery or even tanks with them. Thus the initial attacks would be mostly conducted by light infantry for all intents & purposes. Now all along the coast in this region were the Martello Towers, not to mention cliffs everywhere. The Germans would have had to deal with the towers & the geography all of which favours the defender. Meanwhile the British move forward their units to trap the Germans on the beaches. Whether the Germans invade at Dover &/or Folkestone-Hythe, their forces would be hence trapped with no where to go & no one to help them.

So where do the Germans invade? Simply they do a Normandy & land to the south of Ramsgate. There are plenty of beaches, plus it's some distance from Dover. So the Germans can establish themselves some miles from the expected invasion area where the British thought the Germans would attack. This hence gives the Germans time to prepare for British counter-attacks.

But before all that takes place, there's the invasion itself. First you'd land your airbourne units around the beaches at Ramsgate & create a defence perimeter, whilst the first wave comes ashore. We're talking about 2 airbourne & 3 infantry divisions at this point. The next wave (or two) sees an additional 2 infantry & 1 panzer division arrive. By dusk, not only do you have a large force ashore safe & sound, but Ramsgate is also taken. This is important because Ramsgate has a port so the Germans can commence bringing in the next waves which have all the heavy equipment.

After a few days of building up the German forces, a feint attack of 3 divisions heads for Canterbury, whilst the main attack of 2 panzer, 5 infantry & 1 mountain divsion drives for Dover. The all important port is taken from the rear making it's defences more or less useless in repulsing the real German attack. Once Dover is taken & open for shipping, well the Battle of Britain is more or less over barr the shouting. But the German plans were nothing like this, so they lose big time with 8 divisions slaughtered instead.

now now folks, we're here to figure out how Sealion could succeed, not why it would have failed. I'd say it would take a long string of Germany doing the right thing and Britain not. Hmmm... let us say that Hitler planned from the beginning that he might have to invade Britain and planned accordingly. I've read that one of the disadvantages Germany had in the Battle of Britain was that one of their fighter planes didn't have drop tanks.. let's say this plane was designed better so it had drop tanks. Let's say that Germany didn't waste all those resources on pocket battleships and cruisers, and used them on more subs and proper landing craft. Is it possible for the Germans to train a few more parachute divisions? They already had some DD tanks that were originally going to be used in Sealion... could they make a lot more of them? If Germany is not going to attack Russia, then they certainly have a better chance of getting Sealion underway (if not actually succeeding with it)...

David Howery said:

now now folks, we're here to figure out how Sealion could succeed, not why it would have failed. I'd say it would take a long string of Germany doing the right thing and Britain not. Hmmm... let us say that Hitler planned from the beginning that he might have to invade Britain and planned accordingly. I've read that one of the disadvantages Germany had in the Battle of Britain was that one of their fighter planes didn't have drop tanks.. let's say this plane was designed better so it had drop tanks. Let's say that Germany didn't waste all those resources on pocket battleships and cruisers, and used them on more subs and proper landing craft. Is it possible for the Germans to train a few more parachute divisions? They already had some DD tanks that were originally going to be used in Sealion... could they make a lot more of them? If Germany is not going to attack Russia, then they certainly have a better chance of getting Sealion underway (if not actually succeeding with it)...

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Well, to be honest, Germany could have all the you-beaut equipment that she could get her hands on, but little of this will make much of a difference if they land at the wrong location. You just need to look at the pointless raid on Dieppe to know that, yes they had good equipment including tanks, but they landed at the wrong place. And this is besides the fact that the raid was stupid in the first place. The British deliberately wanted it to fail to prove to the Americans that you can't take a port head on. In other words, there would be no frontal assault upon Calais let alone Cherbourg. The Germans must land on the beaches south of Ramsgate if they are to have a chance at all. Anywhere else, especially at Dover, Folkestone, &/or Hythe, merely leads to defeat.

Brit wonder weapons

What about all the British secret weapons which were to be used to combat a German seaborne invasion, such as the device designed to set the English Channel on fire ? Wouldn't the more successful of these wonder weapons have enabled Britain to resist invasion even more successfully and inflicted heavier, perhaps even prohibitive, German casulaties during SEELOWE/SEA LION ? And despite German control of the air, couldn't the RN's major surface units have been still able to intercept and sink the German cross-Channel invasion fleet ?

David Howery said:

now now folks, we're here to figure out how Sealion could succeed, not why it would have failed.

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And we're telling what he has to do to get it to work.

David Howery said:

I'd say it would take a long string of Germany doing the right thing and Britain not. Hmmm... let us say that Hitler planned from the beginning that he might have to invade Britain and planned accordingly. I've read that one of the disadvantages Germany had in the Battle of Britain was that one of their fighter planes didn't have drop tanks.. let's say this plane was designed better so it had drop tanks.

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which means it can carry less ammo and is heavier in the battle for france, right?

David Howery said:

Let's say that Germany didn't waste all those resources on pocket battleships and cruisers, and used them on more subs and proper landing craft.

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Umm. subs don't do that well against capital ships, and building subs and landing craft seems designed to tell britain "hey, we plan on invading you!"

War in 38 over Czechoslovakia, perhaps.

David Howery said:

Is it possible for the Germans to train a few more parachute divisions? The
y already had some DD tanks that were originally going to be used in Sealion... could they make a lot more of them? If Germany is not going to attack Russia, then they certainly have a better chance of getting Sealion underway (if not actually succeeding with it)...

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I don't see how a military operation in 41 alters their plans for sealion.

For the subs, I was thinking more about having them sink supply ships rather than capital ships.... have Britain with less food and fewer military supplies. To be sure, they wouldn't sink that many capital ships, but if those ships have less fuel and ammo, they're not so effective.
The drop tanks are dropped before combat... the idea is to give the fighters more time over Britain.. their biggest problem was that they had little maneuvering time as they had to fly all the way over from France and then back again. Less ammo? no idea....
Barbarossa did affect Sealion... Hitler was planning all along on invading the USSR, and didn't want to get bogged down in Britain. If he hadn't planned on Barbarossa, he might have actually gotten going with Sealion.
To be sure, nothing here is a warwinner. Along with Hitler doing everything right, Britain would have to make some mistakes too. Maybe Dunkirk doesn't come off so well, and the bulk of the troops are lost there. Perhaps that Brit bomber doesn't accidently bomb german civilians, so Hitler doesn't call off the attacks on radar and military targets to attack London directly.
Sealion was not impossible to succeed, but it certainly was improbable... it'd take a long chain of circumstances to make it work...

David Howery said:

now now folks, we're here to figure out how Sealion could succeed, not why it would have failed.

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It would have been impossible for Sealion to succeed without a much earlier POD, and would need ot have the USA on Germany's side.

Otherwise, it would require every man, woman, child, and their pets to commit suicide prior to the German invasion.

Faeelin said:

Umm. subs don't do that well against capital ships, and building subs and landing craft seems designed to tell britain "hey, we plan on invading you!"

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Abdul Hadi Pasha said:

Otherwise, it would require every man, woman, child, and their pets to commit suicide prior to the German invasion.

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Now we're talking! Got ourselves a couple of comedians over here. I gotta agree with Faeelin though, you can't really depend on submarine to defend a invading fleet without any surface ships. And subs can't pound the beaches with shells before the troops land.

Abdul, I would love see a couple of Nazi dogs (racist perhaps?!) storming the beaches, maybe with a couple pound of dynomites strapped on them?

It is often said that Sealion could never suceed because the Germans had no clue about amphibious operations. The thing about the clue might be right, but I strongly disagree that this should prevent Sealion from succeeding. The Germans considdered Sealion an extended rivercrossing and basically I think this was the right approach - if being German. Anglo-Saxons would of course never with their tail heavy organisation have done it that way, but German army units traveled light and with 10 Divisions across I doubt there would be much the British could do.

That the Germans didn't have the liftcapacity to cross the Channel is simply rubbish. A German Division on the attack would need in the region of 250 tons of supplys a day, and I'll claim that the Danish railway/car ferries, which were under German control after april 1940, could alone land and supply at least 10 Divisions. Not over the beaches of course, but from a conquerred port and with some prefab ramps in place. All in all not impossible engineering jobs.

Where the impossible thing comes in is in achieving the necessary seacontrol over the Channel area. By 1940 neither the Kriegsmarine nor the Luftwaffe were in any state near able to secure that. Had the entire Luftwaffe prewar been trained in seatarget attacks (i.e. torpedo attacks) and incl. cooperation with the Kriegsmarine, then they might perhaps just have had a chance, but they didn't start training for that until much later. By 1940 they mainly would have send level bombers, which were about useless against moving targets. Stukas were OK against destroyers, but against a battleship with armoured decks a 1940 Stuka would not have made much impression. Next there only was couple of hundred operational Stukas in mid 1940, I doubt that would suffice against the main force of the RN.

To me it seems like Kriegsmarine had realised the impossibility of the sea control part and used any trick to avoid the humiliation of becoming the scapegoat of a failed Sealion, incl. wildly exagerating the need for tonnage and not showing much imagination in where to get it.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

Redbeard said:

It is often said that Sealion could never suceed because the Germans had no clue about amphibious operations. The thing about the clue might be right, but I strongly disagree that this should prevent Sealion from succeeding. The Germans considdered Sealion an extended rivercrossing and basically I think this was the right approach - if being German. Anglo-Saxons would of course never with their tail heavy organisation have done it that way, but German army units traveled light and with 10 Divisions across I doubt there would be much the British could do.

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Let's see.

US and UK: Premier naval powers. History of naval operations in WW1 and the pacific. (WW1 for the Brits, anyway).

Germany: Ruled by an Austrian corporal who had no concept of naval warfare.

Which one knows more about how to cross the channel?

Redbeard said:

That the Germans didn't have the liftcapacity to cross the Channel is simply rubbish. A German Division on the attack would need in the region of 250 tons of supplys a day, and I'll claim that the Danish railway/car ferries, which were under German control after april 1940, could alone land and supply at least 10 Divisions. Not over the beaches of course, but from a conquerred port and with some prefab ramps in place. All in all not impossible engineering jobs.

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You know, there's ready access to what the germans wanted to use already posted, and I look foward to the thought of these undefended barges sailing the channel.