Garrison
Donor
Anything resembling proper artillery to suppress defenders behind the beaches, given the Luftwaffe is trying to interdict the RAF and the Royal Navy while they are trying to land.
E Boats for Sealion
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
Crew to man the requisitioned tugs/fishing boats/barges.
Someone who understands what happens in the bottom of a fuel tank that's sat level all it's life and is suddenly shaken all about.
Fodder for the horses could be a problem. Britain motorised it's Army for two reasons.
1 better mobility and flexibility.
2 horses were disappearing from daily life and it became difficult to find the kind of horses an army needed. Big cart or plough horses were too big and slow the army wanted what was called a light van horse. The sort used by horse drawn taxis and delivery vehicles. The sort of job taken by autos that Britain had in large numbers. The numbers of commercial vehicles to thousands of population was only exceeded by the USA.
1 better mobility and flexibility.
2 horses were disappearing from daily life and it became difficult to find the kind of horses an army needed. Big cart or plough horses were too big and slow the army wanted what was called a light van horse. The sort used by horse drawn taxis and delivery vehicles. The sort of job taken by autos that Britain had in large numbers. The numbers of commercial vehicles to thousands of population was only exceeded by the USA.
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the shortest route I have seen is a dog leg from Calais to just west of Rye app 50 miles so at 3 knots about 16 hours and the plan was to beach at or shortly after high tide one has to deal with two rising tides and one ebb.O joy.
And let us not forget the UK is NOT France, the Germans will NOT be pulling up to a gas station and pumping fuel into their panzers. The invaders will not get their hands on any booty: fuel, food, fodder, vehicles, horses; anything of value will be removed or destroyed.
Thanks for the map.The other thing about the Channel, shipwrecks and other debris dating back to medieval times
Here's some of the stuff from WWI
View attachment 679538
Forgotten Wrecks of the First World War - Interactive Chart
map.forgottenwrecks.org
Not sure how it affects tanks launched at 4m depth
cardcarrier
Banned
now here i would disagree; even though I vigorously reject sealion even being able to leave port before being pancaked by the Royal navy up to and including ships steaming into the french harbors at point blank actions
every British action in the first half of the war involved them leaving tons of booty to the enemy, I wouldn't be so quick to assume they would go all Alberich on their own territory any more than France was willing to go on theirs; keeping in mind that even legitimate psychotic nazi bootlickers like Speer and Guderian didn't go Alberich on their own territories, hell even the Russians didn't do it that much
The experts of Sandhurst wargame believed they could get ashore. It's the following waves, no.
The ridiculous part was how the plan would play out? Loading was to take start a S -5days. Assembly off coast at 1700 S-1 days. Landings start at 0500 at low tide at first light.
The columns to arrive up side of coast and run parallel to coast to beaches (an old navigation trick). The best bit, like Napoleonic cavalry, wheel in threes, from column to line. Form a line and assault.
LW was to aerial mine the channels around Isle of Wright, to lock in RN there. No mention of persistence of this, and time for minesweepers to breach.
Yet, the bulldozer has fine shingle in its tracks and still going. Yet, the bulldozer manages to push a load of shingle, and against that resistance, increase shear and effective ground pressure. the shingle is staying put.
And BTW, what is the ground pressure of the wheeled vehicle?
The Sandhurst experts deliberately allowed the first wave to get ashore because they were running an Army exercise, and if no Invasion forces got ashore, there wasn't much point to running the damn thing.
Garrison
Donor
Which just shows you know little of British planning. They had months to work to make sure that nothing would be left for the invaders. French morale collapsed to fast for them to take any meaningful action. This wouldn't be full blown scorched earth just the destruction of strategic items that would aid the invader, so things like petrol supplies, which were already being closely monitored and controlled.
True,
But there again Norway was impossible and Britain was supposed to be prepared for the Channel dash.
Fleet E was probably to be diverted east, and KM didn't want as the biggest blood bath. Worse not tanks in that group.
Every book I've ever read on Sealion mentions that the UK had every intention of making sure the Germans, assuming they successfully got men ashore, would be unable to forage for any supplies.
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
It's been mentioned before. The experts at Sandhurst, an Army Staff College, adjusted the starting preconditions precisely to enable the first wave to get ashore in a reasonably coherent fashion. That was to enable them to carry out a game in which the Army had something to do.
Having been involved in a peripheral manner with the subsequent reruns of the exercise, I can confirm that the experts at Sandhurst accepted that the starting conditions were unrealistic, but that without them, there's not much that can be learned.
There's also the mild issue that Channel swimmers tend to at most be carrying ya know swim suits or wet suits. Not rifles, rations, gas masks, haversacks, howizters and the odd Panzer.
This is old but someone asked why this particular scenario keeps coming up and my answer is that this is a website about other paths history may have taken and there are those here who refuse to countenance any change in the timeline. Hitler dying in WWI and a successful Stresemann presidency are only a precursor a failed German invasion. The dream of trying and failing to attack the UK occupies the mind of General Secretary Rosa Luxemburg.
And now I'm imagining the Germans trying to have a bunch of soldiers swimming and wearing lifevests while trying to pull a panzer on a raft across the English Channel.
Assuming the Germans were dumb enough to try it just how many divisions would they lose?
The port capacity to unload supplies. Which didn’t exist. Like literally the ports weren’t big enough.