Beating a Dead Sea Mammal: How can a non-ASB Operation Sea Lion thread be created?

I agree. Use the core elements best at amphibious work to lead the way. Now, what caused you to conclude the German army would not do the same thing, knowing as we do that the German army had already conducted a successful amphibious assault in Norway in 1940?

Possibly because the most ambitious amphibious assault to date by the Marine Stosstrupp Abteilung was the occupation of the Channel Islands and thus they had little extra knowhow to share with the Heer? As you yourself noted there were plenty of German soldiers with experience of clambering off a sinking ship.
 
Japan was a nation with a limited industrial base, facing the greatest indutrial nation of all time, capable of building subs at the rate other nations could build build pastries; by the way, i totally disagree to to fact that Japan was starved to capitulation by submarine warfare; extensive submarine warfare against japan was only possible late in the war, when allied bases were close enough to japanese maion lines of sea shipping. In order to achieve this a lenghty camapign across the pacific was necessary; furthermore I am of the opinion that the bombing campaign was far more important; remove that and the campaign across pacific and it would have takes years to wear down Japan

Also weren’t most of Japan’s coastal shipping losses due to B-29 mining campaigns, not subs?
 
Oh for goodness sake. How are 15,000 German soldiers going to get to Iceland?

I'm also still waiting to hear precisely when this invasion is going to take place and what naval assets were going to escort it. The British took Iceland well before the fall of France. If you wait until afterwards, the Germans may not be able to cobble together a naval force comparable to the British one -- and even if they can, by June there's an entire Allied division garrisoning Iceland.
 
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SsgtC

Banned
Oh for goodness sake. How are 15,000 German soldiers going to get to Iceland?

I'm also still waiting to hear precisely when this invasion is going to take place and what naval assets were going to escort it. The British took Iceland well before the fall of France. If you wait until afterwards, the Germans may not be able to cobble together a naval force comparable to the British one -- and even if they can, by June there's an entire Allied division garrisoning Iceland.
Oh you must have missed it. He upped that to 25,000 Germans.
 
Also weren’t most of Japan’s coastal shipping losses due to B-29 mining campaigns, not subs?

If you mean the B-29 minelaying campaign to drive the Japanese-Korean cross trade and their commercial fishing fleet off the seas, absolutely. In the shallows that close in, it made sense to aerially mine the intercoastal traffic lanes and harbor ingress/egress routes. The subs, when they did operate in the area, were in the Sea of Japan, in the Inland Sea, the East China Sea and South China Sea.
 
Oh you must have missed it. He upped that to 25,000 Germans.
Oh. Why don't we just say a million? No way the British are going to be able to take Iceland then!

I don't know why you're obsessed with this logistics thing. How hard can it be?

Surely the trip from Germany to Iceland is nothing more than an unusually wide river crossing, and they had plenty of experience with that from their continental campaigns.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Oh. Why don't we just say a million? No way the British are going to be able to take Iceland then!

I don't know why you're obsessed with this logistics thing. How hard can it be?

Surely the trip from Germany to Iceland is nothing more than an unusually wide river crossing, and they had plenty of experience with that from their continental campaigns.
You know you're right. I don't even know why any military in the world even bothers with Supply Officers or Quartermaster Corps. Just wing it! It'll work out. Who needs to plan this stuff out anyway?
 
Oh for goodness sake. How are 15,000 German soldiers going to get to Iceland?

There's no invasion of Iceland. It's too far for sea or air transport, and didn't have enough airfields.

We're talking a hypothetical case where, if there were such an invasion, would the British counterattack sooner ad hoc, or wait for a long time to train properly for the amphibious role. SsgtC seems to have thought the Royal Marines were a bigger force than they actually were in 1940. SsgtC observed that the solution to quickly boost amphibious capability was to use the Royal Marines as efficiently as possible, which would be an ad hoc solution.
 
There's no invasion of Iceland. It's too far for sea or air transport, and didn't have enough airfields.

We're talking a hypothetical case where, if there were such an invasion, would the British counterattack sooner ad hoc, or wait for a long time to train properly for the amphibious role. SsgtC seems to have thought the Royal Marines were a bigger force than they actually were in 1940. SsgtC observed that the solution to quickly boost amphibious capability was to use the Royal Marines as efficiently as possible, which would be an ad hoc solution.
In this hypothetical scenario, the British would not need to wait to invade because they would have a fully trained and equipped, specialized amphibious assault corps, with supporting ships and aircraft, that coincidentally had just spent three years drilling for a potential liberation of Iceland, all ready to go on short notice, and they would dispatch it immediately upon confirming that the Germans were in Reykjavik. During their drills they would also have infiltrated Iceland with special stay-behind units to sabotage the German fortification efforts.
 
Glenn239 said:

There's no invasion of Iceland. It's too far for sea or air transport, and didn't have enough airfields.

We're talking a hypothetical case where, if there were such an invasion, would the British counterattack sooner ad hoc, or wait for a long time to train properly for the amphibious role. SsgtC seems to have thought the Royal Marines were a bigger force than they actually were in 1940. SsgtC observed that the solution to quickly boost amphibious capability was to use the Royal Marines as efficiently as possible, which would be an ad hoc solution.

In this hypothetical scenario, the British would not need to wait to invade because they would have a fully trained and equipped, specialized amphibious assault corps, with supporting ships and aircraft, that coincidentally had just spent three years drilling for a potential liberation of Iceland, all ready to go on short notice, and they would dispatch it immediately upon confirming that the Germans were in Reykjavik. During their drills they would also have infiltrated Iceland with special stay-behind units to sabotage the German fortification efforts.

It has got the same reasonable speculative grounds; so that it is equivalent? I mean it is all "hypothetically valid" right?
 

nbcman

Donor
There's no invasion of Iceland. It's too far for sea or air transport, and didn't have enough airfields.

We're talking a hypothetical case where, if there were such an invasion, would the British counterattack sooner ad hoc, or wait for a long time to train properly for the amphibious role. SsgtC seems to have thought the Royal Marines were a bigger force than they actually were in 1940. SsgtC observed that the solution to quickly boost amphibious capability was to use the Royal Marines as efficiently as possible, which would be an ad hoc solution.
According to the RM Unit History site, there was at least 4 battalions of Marines or about 1400 personnel total and not 750.

One of the few fully armed units in the UK that summer, 101 Bde had 66 officers and 1,350 other ranks (an army brigade had 120 officers, 2,824 ORs and 396 vehicles). The Brigade was temporarily attached to 55 Division for ‘reinforcement or counter–attack of any island localities’ and as a reserve for action on the mainland.

EDIT: Although the fourth battalion, 5th RM, wasn't formed until April 1940. The other 3 were formed in December 1939 and January 1940.
 
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In this hypothetical scenario...<snip>

In 1940 there was, AFAIK, no corps level specialist trained and equipped amphibious forces in Europe. Not for Germany or for Britain. Germany's choices were therefore to go ad hoc for things like Norway and Sealion, or wait and miss the 1940 window. They chose to go ad hoc, with the invasion being cancelled due to the failure of the Battle of Britain. SsgtC observes that ad hoc amphibious operations are prone to failure. Think the German army didn't already know that as it went full steam at an improvised solution?
 
In 1940 there was, AFAIK, no corps level specialist trained and equipped amphibious forces in Europe. Not for Germany or for Britain. Germany's choices were therefore to go ad hoc for things like Norway and Sealion, or wait and miss the 1940 window. They chose to go ad hoc, with the invasion being cancelled due to the failure of the Battle of Britain. SsgtC observes that ad hoc amphibious operations are prone to failure. Think the German army didn't already know that as it went full steam at an improvised solution?

In 1940 there was also, AFAIK, no capacity for the Germans to land 25,000 troops in Iceland. I figured since you were adding new pieces to the board I could chip in a few too.

As for "1940 windows," I will say once again that I want someone to explain precisely when this window was.
 
As for "1940 windows," I will say once again that I want someone to explain precisely when this window was.

Read Tooze. The 'window' for Germany, as calculated by the Germans themselves was thought to be 1940-1941. After that the US would come into play and Germany would lose the initiative.
 
Read Tooze. The 'window' for Germany, as calculated by the Germans themselves was thought to be 1940-1941. After that the US would come into play and Germany would lose the initiative.
Absent landing craft and supplies to sustain a serious assault, surely the "window" for any invasion of Iceland at least begins to close in April 1940 and is fully closed by June 1940.
 
A bit of a sidebar.

As a person who has lived in Iceland and Finland, and talked in great detail with people alive at the time, I can tell you that the British set up machine gun emplacements before dawn in Reykjavik. The populace had no choice, but largely welcomed them. Coastal watch soldiers were billeted in remote farmhouses, and many of them formed romantic attachments with local girls. My regular bus driver in Reykjavik was one such. In 1946 he returned and married his sweetheart.

The Icelanders regretted greatly the coming of the Americans, who, they felt, treated them with no respect, and abused their hospitality. The U.S. forces bulldozed important historic sites in order to obtain raw materials for constructing runways.

The Invasion of Iceland was of a character wholly different than the German annexations and invasions of 1938-1940 and it has been justifiably left in the dustbin of history. The "invasion" was by 700 ill-equipped, ill-prepared, and very seasick British marines who walked off the ship, onto a dock and talked to the police officers waiting for them. The only casualty was a British soldier who committed suicide. Iceland was compensated and allowed to go about their business. True to their word (and needing the troops elsewhere), the British left in 1941 after convincing the US (then neutral) to take over.

In contrast the annexation of Czechoslovakia and Poland were expressly for the purpose of creating room for more Germans at the expense of whomever was already living there. Cities were bombed and civilians were attacked, and politically troublesome people were executed. And that was just in 1939 before the Germans got really nasty.

That said, the Scandinavian countries got the shit end of the stick in WWII with both the Axis and Allies acting deplorably. Scandinavia was steadfastly and earnestly neutral and willing to trade with either side. Unfortunately they were in a strategically valuable position and had valuable iron ore. The belligerents did not believe they could protect their neutrality.

Britain, Germany and the Soviets feared the other would invade to get the advantage, so they invaded first. Finland was invaded by the Soviets over fears Germany would invade them through Finland. Britain pretended to want to support Finland, but it was an excuse to invade Norway and block shipments of Swedish ore to Germany. Germany invaded Norway because they were afraid the British would invade Norway first and block the ore shipments, and to use it as a naval base to attack the UK. Iceland was invaded by the British to prevent the Germans from doing it first, but the Germans had no plans for Iceland until after the Germans invaded.

Finland sided with Germany when they invaded the Soviet Union, thus the Soviets caused their own fears to happen, but the Finns honorably refused to advance beyond their pre-war borders even when the Soviets were at their lowest point. When the tide turned in favor the Soviets and the Finns negotiated a cease fire, the Soviets thanked them for their restraint by forcing the Finns to oust the Germans.

What a mess.

The reason I quoted these answers is to give a non Anglo-American perspective of the results as some (a few of) the people caught in the meat-grinder saw it. Howsoever their faulty perceptions, it is a stark reminder that even the best well intentioned acts may not come across that way to the people acted upon.
 
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