Operation Sea Lion (1974 Sandhurst Wargame)

Deleted member 94680

Wiki is prone to exaggeration - a depot ships and an Italian submarine carrying two manned torpedoes min-subs in other reports. Still two out of three even if they were tied up in port is pretty good

Ah, that makes more sense. I tried cross-referencing the source wiki gives for that statement, but couldn’t find it online. Thanks.

But, like you said, two vessels with three torps from three planes is pretty good going.
 

hipper

Banned
Great info on the Stringbag everyone, cheers.

I was more questioning the Kriegsmarine having operational destroyers by the time the barges are halfway across the channel, not questioning Swordfish being able to target them

At this time was the Swordfish not being kitted out with air-surface radar? I had a quick look and saw (wiki) Nov. '40 as the ASV Mk II first success when a Whitley hit a U-boat in the Bay of Biscay. Was someone talking about a campaign into '41?

Hudsons Were equipped with ASV in the summer of 1940 the were used for night patrols over the emglish Channel. See collier defence ofthe united kingdom in Hyperwar

ninja’d
 
Build lots of Siebel ferries and other watercraft over the 40/41 winter to supply the German toehold in the UK. Lots, and also replace losses, build new river barges to replace losses. Without discussing whether or not there are enough German ship building places to do this, please let us know what is NOT getting built because of the resources and skilled workers now building the supply shuttle boats. Tanks, aircraft, other shipping or naval vessels? The ONLY way this effort could happen is by shorting something else.

Ammunition production not required for the invasion of Russia. A Sealion transport campaign needs 40,000 tons of steel per month.
 
They have better everything and far more mass, what makes them worse (apart from cost/weight) I genuinely interested in what Glen will come up with?

Traverse time and rate of fire are two issues for the big guns at closer ranges.
 
I am not sure where Glenn was going but if you want to hit a small, agile target, you probably would sacrifice mass and explosive power for rate of fire and the speed at which you can move the guns into new positions.

Smaller batteries would be good for that.

Having said that it is pretty much an irrelevance because (a) the main targets of this barrage wouldn't be agile and (b) the Royal Navy is a proper navy, so unlike some navies we could mention, it never does something stupid like send in a battleship without numerous support ships with smaller, faster gun systems to swat at pesky flies and torpedo boats.

I mean it's almost as if a competent navy combines multiple ship classes together to form a task force that is better than the sum of its parts or something, but now we're back to the boring details that plainly don't matter.

Traverse time and rate of fire is relative to the firing ship, not just the target ship. A battleship's main guns can and will hit targets, but just like at Samar, they're not going to be any more effective than the lighter calibre weapons, IMO.
 
As was mentioned, if the DD's and TB's are laying mines they are not escorting the invasion fleet. They can't be in two places at once.

Correct, minelayers were not going to be DD's or TB's, just like the minesweepers were not going to be DD's or TB's.

And I agree, troops near the beaches will need water delivered until they get inland and near creeks/streams. Assuming they get off the beachhead in the first place. And I can easily see snipers around to shoot anyone trying to get water...

When I suggested the possibility of a contained bridgehead, that could easily mean contained 10 miles inland, not 10 yards inland. This ain't the 7th Army in Normandy with the Panzer reserve.
 
In 1944 we managed to get tens of thousands of well-supplied troops across the channel with tanks and total air superiority, but even with help from our American chums we failed to take Caen on the first day and bogged down thereafter. In 1940 the Germans, going the other way, would have been in a worse position. It doesn't matter if the individual fighting German circa 1940 was superhuman, there's only so far a man can dash from cover to cover without water before he collapses.

This point was covered earlier - the British army in Britain in September 1940 was not of the quality of the German army in France in June 1944. As time went on, (ie, 1941, 1942) the quality of the British army in the UK improved. But these measures took time.

Each soldier would presumably carry his daily rations with him and perhaps a water bladder, but just that one issue alone would kill the invasion. Every well between London and Dover would have been blown up, or filled in with mustard gas. Even if we didn't implement a scorched-earth policy, I imagine that supplying tens of thousands of soldiers with water in peacetime conditions as part of an exercise is difficult. Under artillery fire it would have been even worse.

Both sides have gas, don't they? Question on 11 Group - does its job get easier or harder if its bases are being gassed?
 
...wait..someone (so Glenn then) suggested invading the Isle of Wight? I assume he took this as being the perfect and logical thing to do and something der ubermensch could do without any difficulty right?

The anti-Sealion crowd argues out of both sides of its mouth on IOW. One post, they'll insist that Sealion is too costly. In another, when it's IOW where the cost of failure is so much less, (Crete levels), then without skipping a beat the "too costly" argument is dropped and some other argument is adapted, usually, "strategically pointless" or something like that.

The idea behind IOW was to draw the RN and RAF into a Channel battle sooner than Sealion could be executed. (ie, July 1940, not September 1940).
 
Of course.

The plans for a night time parachute drop onto an island the size of my living room four miles off the Royal Navy's largest and oldest base were a work of art. The RAF wouldn't be able to interfere because it was in the Channel you see (no, shush and listen) and the Army wouldn't move in to quickly wipe out any Germans survivors because they'd have to be held in reserve in case there was an invasion of the UK (really, shush). There would be a diversionary invasion of Iceland (the island, not the supermarket) in order to split the Kriegsmarine's miniscule resources along with other diversionary raids on eastern England, obvs, because facing the entirety of the RN Home Fleet with the whole KM "fleet" was deemed to be just too easy (stop laughing). The fact that the entire island could be hit by RN guns while the ships were still tied up in Portsmouth harbour wasn't an issue because the Luftwaffe would be able to destroy the fleet at anchor and Fighter Command wouldn't be able to do a thing to stop them (stop asking awkward questions about why they didn't do that in 1940 if it was so easy).

It was by far Glenn's finest hour. I still occasionally think about it and giggle.

IOW is 15 miles across, and the LW had nighttime navigation aids. How big is your living room? Night was better than day because of the RAF, which could extract large casualties in daylight, but was fairly useless at night. If you think the navigational hazard at night was worse than the Spitfire hazard in daylight, guess again.
 
To be fair Robert Forczyk proposed it first and even sold a book on the idea to gullible idiots. It, for reasons so admirably encapsulated by Mike D above, made no sense and would not remotely have worked but it started so many internet bonfires of stupid ideas.

IOW is big enough to be an advanced airfield, astride two major ports, was very poorly defended in July 1940, and large enough to be an airborne target at night.
 
Does @Glenn239 have a grasp of military history - yes. Is it always used in a relevant way to the question at hand - not in my opinion. And why the "if only Germany had not invaded Russia they might have won the Second World War" idea is still getting any air time I have no idea. But as for Sea Lion - if there isn't anything new then surely we don't have to keep on regurgitating the same facts and information every few weeks. Can't the "conspiracy theory" rule kick in here - unless there is a dramatic change in the available forces, or in the political actors, then Sea Lion is going to fail.

I leave for a couple days and come back on page 95, and the discussion as at page 127 or so. Clearly, you guys are fascinated by the topic. Otherwise, why are you here, and always here?
 
100 page marked reached & the thread is still open.

A question not directly addressed is, at what point do the German leaders call the operation & cut their losses? Is it on D2 when 25% of the barges and other vessels are missing or confirmed destroyed, and those returned are chaotically redistributed to what ever port they fetched up to on return? On D2 what level of losses with the German air force will cause the senior commanders to rethink their options? If two of the landing sites have clearly failed and the others are sending pessimistic messages is that enough to call the thing off.

Cutting losses and evacuating could happen at any time from D+1 onwards, or not at all. It depends on the character of the bridgehead(s) and the battle of the supply lines afterwards.

Knowing what we do about the senior German leaders how bad does it need to be, and how long can it drag on before they admit failure?

Stalingrad and Tunisia?

The question affects how serious the defeat might be judged. There is a big difference between calling it off after a catastrophic first day, and piling on more of the same for several more days. 100,000 men lost has been tossed out as the butchers bill for this defeat. But I'm wondering if the German commanders allow it to go that far. Is 30,000 or 20,000 a more realistic number? Or would it be 50,000?

Did Stalingrad or Tunisia stop the war?
 

hipper

Banned
IOW is big enough to be an advanced airfield, astride two major ports, was very poorly defended in July 1940, and large enough to be an airborne target at night.


a pity
a) German Paratroopers did not drop at night.
b) in July 1940 the german Paratroop force was weaker than the defenders of the IOW.
 
IOW is big enough to be an advanced airfield, astride two major ports, was very poorly defended in July 1940, and large enough to be an airborne target at night.

It has one, one airfield and much of the ground is covered by the guns of the Royal Navy destroyers based in Portsmouth without actually having to leave port. It is easier to land troops on the north side than it is on the south, there is this fun tidal system in the Solent which is challenging enough for experienced local pilots who are not under attack by the Royal Navy.

It is a bit like taking all the worst features of the French plan at Dien Bien Phu and then adding them to the worst features of Sealion including the narrow front landing the Heer rejected as feeding its troops into a sausage machine!
 
The anti-Sealion crowd argues out of both sides of its mouth on IOW. One post, they'll insist that Sealion is too costly. In another, when it's IOW where the cost of failure is so much less, (Crete levels), then without skipping a beat the "too costly" argument is dropped and some other argument is adapted, usually, "strategically pointless" or something like that.

The idea behind IOW was to draw the RN and RAF into a Channel battle sooner than Sealion could be executed. (ie, July 1940, not September 1940).
Nearest French Port is probably Cherbourg but that's around 70 miles from the IoW as the crow flies. Given tides etc Le Havre is longer but going to be a bit quicker but a barge is still not going to do that in a day and in Convoy is going to struggle to do it in two. Given the IoW is literally opposite Portsmouth, RN's biggest base in the South, chances of them surviving the first night are not good let alone the second.

Even if they get to the IoW, the ports capable of taking a transport, needed to get any real level of resupply in, are on the North Coast. HMS Revenge can shell almost without even bothering to leave Portsmouth Harbor ( nearest bit of the North coast is about 6 miles, Cowes is less than 10 miles ) . In short attacking right into the teeth of the RN's defenses is a suicide mission even compared to heading straight for Dover. As for the Air battle well the nearest German airfields are further from the IoW than the nearest is to Dover so even less likely to give adequate air cover.
 
How quickly do you think the British can reinforce?

Why reinforce? In the unlikely event that significant numbers of Germans reach the IoW just pull out, use it as a live-fire range for the RA, keep the RN's boot on the LoC, and wait for the starving occupants of the unofficial PoW camp to decide they'd prefer to be the well-fed occupants of an official PoW camp.
 
What destroyers do Swordfish have to hit? I don't see them having any problems against troopships at anchor offloading on to lighters

They are also more than capable of dive bombing slow moving trains of Rhine barges
But the 88mm. Once they have sunk the RN they will murder the Stringbags.
 
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