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German airborne invasion of Britain
- Thread starter Alternate History Geek
- Start date
Actually, what if they just flew a whole army into civilian airports at night, when the military and government were asleep? Granted, the Germans will need to drink a lot of coffee, but when the Brits wake up, the whole island will be under occupation!!!
Let me add a unique perspective to this, as one who has participated in several airborne operations, including a couple that probably rivaled the scale of the one we're talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFvZR2RYnX0
The inherent difficulty in an airborne operation, especially one at the scale necessary to invade Great Britain, (which would involve thousands of paratroopers,) is organization. Hitting the ground and assembling is one of the most confusing and God forsaken frustrating processes I have ever undertaken in my entire military career, and that's WITH modern communication equipment, even including cell phones (which are usually forbidden in training for obvious reasons.) The more men you add, the more difficult this process becomes.
The biggest difference here between modern airborne operations and Second World War-era German airborne operations is the requirement of jumpers to jump with their individual weapons, up to and including automatic weapons in order to increase their effectiveness on the ground. German paratroops, however, did not jump with their individual weapons, as it was deemed as unsafe to the jumper, and instead dropped "bundles" which held these individual weapons simultaneously with the respective exiting chalk, and it was then the chalk or unit's responsibility to recover the bundle upon hitting the ground.
Another thing to consider is that the modern technique of staggering paratroops in the aircraft in order to hasten their assembly is something that the Americans introduced (and eventually mastered,) but the Germans did not. The usual way of thought is that an entire squad or company would all be manifested on the same door of the same aircraft, that way their continuity would remain in-tact both on the aircraft and upon hitting the ground. During airborne operations, however, this is impractical and doesn't matter, because the assembly areas are usually spread across the entire dropzone (which is guaranteed to be massive for the sake of an operation of this size) and are usually limited to one rifle company per assembly area in order to hasten the capture of key terrain and objectives, and to mitigate clustering in order to prevent effective indirect fire. That means if you stack an entire aircraft with men of all the same company, the first jumper will land farthest from the assembly area, while the last jumper will land the closest (or vice versa), and it will take longer for the entire unit to become assembled before they can move on their objective, because the first (or last) jumper has to travel an extraordinarily long (or extraordinarily short) distance to get there and be accounted for. However if you stack the aircraft with men of different companies in relation to how they'll hit the dropzone in order to expedite their movement to their assembly area, it's a lot more effective. For instance, let's say you have three companies: A, B, and C. The direction of travel of the aircraft is south to north. C is the southern most assembly area, B is in the middle, A is the northern most. That means you want your first jumpers to be in C company, the middle jumpers in the chalk to be in B company, and your last jumpers to be in A company. This is something that no one but the U.S. implemented during the Second World War, and other nations didn't start implementing this tactic until the 60's, starting firstly with Rhodesia, which is a great nation to look at if you want to look at true mastery of airborne operations.
You might be saying that this is more reflective of tactical operations, not strategic, but in the big picture every second upon hitting the DZ counts for both. Airborne operations count on speed, violence of action and most importantly shock and surprise through forced vertical envelopment. If you want to transfer combat power from the air to the ground, it's worth noting that when it comes to airborne operations you start losing combat power immediately as soon as that first jumper exits that first aircraft. It's thus imperative that every single trooper in the formation realizes the urgency of the situation and is given every advantage he can, from his equipment all the way to how he's positioned in the aircraft, to get to his assembly area as quickly as possible in order to capture his unit's assigned objective. The Germans didn't seem to do this, and thus there's no way a German airborne invasion of Britain would be any more effective than a German seaborne invasion. In fact, it'd probably be drastically less effective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFvZR2RYnX0
The inherent difficulty in an airborne operation, especially one at the scale necessary to invade Great Britain, (which would involve thousands of paratroopers,) is organization. Hitting the ground and assembling is one of the most confusing and God forsaken frustrating processes I have ever undertaken in my entire military career, and that's WITH modern communication equipment, even including cell phones (which are usually forbidden in training for obvious reasons.) The more men you add, the more difficult this process becomes.
The biggest difference here between modern airborne operations and Second World War-era German airborne operations is the requirement of jumpers to jump with their individual weapons, up to and including automatic weapons in order to increase their effectiveness on the ground. German paratroops, however, did not jump with their individual weapons, as it was deemed as unsafe to the jumper, and instead dropped "bundles" which held these individual weapons simultaneously with the respective exiting chalk, and it was then the chalk or unit's responsibility to recover the bundle upon hitting the ground.
Another thing to consider is that the modern technique of staggering paratroops in the aircraft in order to hasten their assembly is something that the Americans introduced (and eventually mastered,) but the Germans did not. The usual way of thought is that an entire squad or company would all be manifested on the same door of the same aircraft, that way their continuity would remain in-tact both on the aircraft and upon hitting the ground. During airborne operations, however, this is impractical and doesn't matter, because the assembly areas are usually spread across the entire dropzone (which is guaranteed to be massive for the sake of an operation of this size) and are usually limited to one rifle company per assembly area in order to hasten the capture of key terrain and objectives, and to mitigate clustering in order to prevent effective indirect fire. That means if you stack an entire aircraft with men of all the same company, the first jumper will land farthest from the assembly area, while the last jumper will land the closest (or vice versa), and it will take longer for the entire unit to become assembled before they can move on their objective, because the first (or last) jumper has to travel an extraordinarily long (or extraordinarily short) distance to get there and be accounted for. However if you stack the aircraft with men of different companies in relation to how they'll hit the dropzone in order to expedite their movement to their assembly area, it's a lot more effective. For instance, let's say you have three companies: A, B, and C. The direction of travel of the aircraft is south to north. C is the southern most assembly area, B is in the middle, A is the northern most. That means you want your first jumpers to be in C company, the middle jumpers in the chalk to be in B company, and your last jumpers to be in A company. This is something that no one but the U.S. implemented during the Second World War, and other nations didn't start implementing this tactic until the 60's, starting firstly with Rhodesia, which is a great nation to look at if you want to look at true mastery of airborne operations.
You might be saying that this is more reflective of tactical operations, not strategic, but in the big picture every second upon hitting the DZ counts for both. Airborne operations count on speed, violence of action and most importantly shock and surprise through forced vertical envelopment. If you want to transfer combat power from the air to the ground, it's worth noting that when it comes to airborne operations you start losing combat power immediately as soon as that first jumper exits that first aircraft. It's thus imperative that every single trooper in the formation realizes the urgency of the situation and is given every advantage he can, from his equipment all the way to how he's positioned in the aircraft, to get to his assembly area as quickly as possible in order to capture his unit's assigned objective. The Germans didn't seem to do this, and thus there's no way a German airborne invasion of Britain would be any more effective than a German seaborne invasion. In fact, it'd probably be drastically less effective.
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The operation will fail when the troops have to keep stopping to urinate all that coffee out. Skorzeny would have peed his pants but normal troops weren't that crude.
Actually, for all that it is worth, the German troops should just drop in thoroughly liquored up. The end result will be just the same and at least somebody will have had a good time...
Let's see; the invasion force is 250,000 men and we have @300 Ju52s available, which can carry 17 men per trip. That works out to just over 49 trips per aircraft. Allowing an hour for each trip (loading, flight out, unloading, flight back) that's 49 hours for the entire force. Assuming, of course, that the British just sit and watch the show.
That's one hell of a lot of coffee.
Let's put this into perspective, as one final point:
The "D-Day Anniversary" jump I did with my brigade just a few months ago on June 6th was comprised of 2,500 jumpers. The entire force of this 2,500 man element hit the ground in near unison and was dropped in under 10 minutes.
It took an entire hour, and that's WITH radios and other modern commo equipment, to assemble this entire massive force, where it then began moving out to take objectives in company (100-man) and platoon (20-man) sized elements. This might not seem like much...but let me assure you. That is a LONG, LOOOONNGGGGG one hour.
Now let's multiply the amount of jumpers by about 5, expand the size of the dropzone from the one we had to probably about four times its size, add about 100 more assembly areas, which will add to the already inherent confusion, and subtract modern communications equipment and the fact that we didn't have to recover our actual personal equipment or weapons, as we jump with them attached to us, unlike the Germans, who strapped them in a bundle that simultaneously was pushed out the door with the chalk it was assigned to when they got the green light. Let's subtract night vision capability, which we had. Let's account for another hour or so for this force to even find and properly put their weapons and equipment into operation. Let's account for probably 5% of this force being completely unable to even find this aforementioned equipment. Now let's account for a much greater chance for injury for the Germans due to the abhorrently unsafe parachutes they jumped with and their lack of regulation and training to mitigate both static line injuries and full or partial malfunctions, and the fact that the Germans never before have conducted a nighttime parachute drop in combat conditions (and only did one during the entire war, during the Battle of the Bulge, and was not nearly one at this scale.) And while we're at it, let's also account for inevitable navigational errors at the hands of inexperienced Luftwaffe transport aircraft pilots.
Yeah. Not a chance in hell.
The "D-Day Anniversary" jump I did with my brigade just a few months ago on June 6th was comprised of 2,500 jumpers. The entire force of this 2,500 man element hit the ground in near unison and was dropped in under 10 minutes.
It took an entire hour, and that's WITH radios and other modern commo equipment, to assemble this entire massive force, where it then began moving out to take objectives in company (100-man) and platoon (20-man) sized elements. This might not seem like much...but let me assure you. That is a LONG, LOOOONNGGGGG one hour.
Now let's multiply the amount of jumpers by about 5, expand the size of the dropzone from the one we had to probably about four times its size, add about 100 more assembly areas, which will add to the already inherent confusion, and subtract modern communications equipment and the fact that we didn't have to recover our actual personal equipment or weapons, as we jump with them attached to us, unlike the Germans, who strapped them in a bundle that simultaneously was pushed out the door with the chalk it was assigned to when they got the green light. Let's subtract night vision capability, which we had. Let's account for another hour or so for this force to even find and properly put their weapons and equipment into operation. Let's account for probably 5% of this force being completely unable to even find this aforementioned equipment. Now let's account for a much greater chance for injury for the Germans due to the abhorrently unsafe parachutes they jumped with and their lack of regulation and training to mitigate both static line injuries and full or partial malfunctions, and the fact that the Germans never before have conducted a nighttime parachute drop in combat conditions (and only did one during the entire war, during the Battle of the Bulge, and was not nearly one at this scale.) And while we're at it, let's also account for inevitable navigational errors at the hands of inexperienced Luftwaffe transport aircraft pilots.
Yeah. Not a chance in hell.
Simple: for one, it was a daytime jump. Two, it was a lot smaller, and the force involved was smaller as a result. Like I said, the difficulty of assembling airdropped land forces only increases with the more men you drop. The smaller, naturally the more effective it is, but if you're talking about an invasion of Great Britain, I'm assuming you're talking about employing more than just one or two divisions of paratroops, you're talking about employing the entire force that Germany had at its disposal. This would be impossible.
Furthermore, the Fallschirmjager almost didn't pull off Crete. Look at the casualty rate. It is heinous and unfortunately proportionate to how ineffective German airborne operations were.
Wikipedia said:
What if they dropped on the Isle of White and rigged up cargo lines between there and the French coast to set up an advance base???
What about a giant land reclamation program? Dump rocks and mud into the straits of Dover until the land fills up and send the Panzer across.
At first blush, I thought of the proposal to lead with Fallschirmjägern & follow with seaborne troops. That's a non-starter, since even weather in the Channel makes the German bargelift improbable.
Without the seaborne supply, you've got a bestselling Cornelius Ryan book...& an epic war movie starring Ryan O'Neal as Rommel.
Without the seaborne supply, you've got a bestselling Cornelius Ryan book...& an epic war movie starring Ryan O'Neal as Rommel.
I wandered into a thread on another board a few weeks ago where it had degenerated into making bridges by linking U-boats together........
hey, if they build the tunnel big enough they can fly the Ju52's through it in safety!!
A Type VII has a maximum beam of 6.2 m, even if you could add almost 5m on either side of that with the track (raise it to 16m), you'd still need more than 2000 boats to make the crossing. At least if you built a causeway or tunnel the RAF wouldn't be able to take it out with training aircraft.