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

How long was basic infantry training in the British army? To stand up a US WW II army division took 1 year. In an emergency, maybe 6 months. How fast could a command cadre organize a British equivalent if the pressure is on? 3 months?

Plus the British are standing up units during the Battle of France and training as fast as they can anyway, so I think they would be equipping units as they produce the stuff.

Basic training isn't the issue to be honest - you can train a soldier to a very basic standard in ten to twelve weeks (my basic training was 12 weeks in 1998, I believe it's 14 weeks now although a week of that is a battlefield tour to France or Flanders). If you cut out everything that isn't a total necessity (drill and adventure training for example) you can probably cut that down to eight to ten weeks.

These days you then have a follow on trade training period (called Phase Two) - mine was about a year (I was a technical trade) but for the infantry it's around another twelve to fourteen weeks (Paras do longer for their jumps etc and the Guards do an extra week or two of drill). I'm not sure what they did back in the 1940s.

The issue when you're building new formations is filling the command appointments - getting the NCOs, the Warrant Officers, the senior Battalion officers and the Brigade and Div staff officers.

If you called up WW1 NCOs and Officers and put them through a quick refresher you can probably get a division together as quickly as your depots can turn out the right number of private soldiers to man it. It won't be as effective as a division commanded by regular troops, obviously, but you'll have a formation of the right size that can do the basics.
 
Three months will give you soldiers that can just about admin themselves in the field and know the basics of things like fire and manouevre, first aid, etc.

So yes, if you have the NCOs and Officers to fill the CofC then you can put a division out in three or four months, so long as you don't want them to do anything too complicated.
 

Errolwi

Monthly Donor
It's interesting what the NZEF (UK) was issued with. They arrived mid-June, and were assigned to General Headquarters Reserve (with 1st Canadian Division & 1st Armoured Division). The units had trained as battalions in NZ, and diverted en route from Egypt due to the risk from Italian forces in East Africa.
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-1Doc-c8-94.html#n140
For these operations I organised the Second Echelon into three mobile columns:
The Covering Force, commanded by Brigadier Miles, comprised of—

1 Cavalry Squadron
1 improvised Infantry Battalion of Royal Artillery personnel
1 Machine Gun Company
The 5th Infantry Brigade Group, commanded by Brigadier Hargest, comprised of—

21st Infantry Battalion
22nd Infantry Battalion
23rd Infantry Battalion
The 7th Infantry Brigade Group, commanded by Brigadier Barrowclough, comprised of—
28th Maori Battalion
29th improvised Infantry Battalion (reinforcements)

State of Equipment Issued
We had no field or anti-tank artillery, but for a matter of fact neither had any other British formation. We had, however, an adequate amount of arms and equipment:

Per Battalion
18 Bren guns
10 Boys [anti-tank] rifles
3 Bren carriers
25 per cent of unit transport

We had, however, two complete Bus Companies which could move our whole force at one lift.​

Note the convoy carrying them (and an Australian Brigade) got an anti-raider escort of 2 8-inch cruisers, Hermes, and Hood!

Also of interest is this telegram from Gen Freyberg (GOC NZEF, seconded from British Army)
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-1Doc-c8-90.html

4 July 1940
Further to my cable of 27 June. I have now had time to get in touch with the situation here. Government opinion, shared by all the Services, is that immunity from invasion cannot be guaranteed with the present naval and air forces at our disposal. Once the enemy has committed himself, naval and air forces will seriously interrupt all lines of communication.

It is felt that a seaborne expedition could be transported in motor boats, submarines, warships, transports, and flat-bottomed motor barges, the latter facilitating rapid unloading of armoured fighting vehicles. At or near each point of attack the enemy is likely to make use of parachute troops both to capture landing grounds for troop-carriers and to disorganise communications. The possible scale of airborne invasion is estimated at ten to fifteen thousand men in one day. The enemy is likely to use the shortest sea and air route for his main effort against this country, but is sure to attempt diversionary operations in the Shetlands, Ireland, or in North Scotland.
...
The New Zealand force in buses will be completely mobile. Operationally we are to work in the closest touch with the 1st Canadian Division, who are fully equipped, and their GOC has agreed to support us with artillery. that the Germans will make the attempt and the date indicated is early in July. We must hope that they do and that they do not make any move against Egypt, which would be more difficult to counter now that France has made a separate peace.
...
 

hipper

Banned
just for arguments sake, lets say that the Germans manage to break through the lines at Dunkirk and the great evacuation doesn't happen, and all those men are lost (which in itself is a kinda hard POD, but whatever). What does the UK have at home right afterwards to defend the island? In OTL, the UK famously lost all the equipment but saved the men to fight another day... without those men, what forces are there?

About a million and a half men
 
Even if they lose every man and piece of equipment from Dunkirk, that still leaves around 12 divisions worth of troops ( more units existed but I'm allowing for most being under strength ) plus the Home guard in the UK. They have 250 tanks ( more if you include training vehicles etc) and a minimum of 600 mobile artillery pieces with UK production of over 100 artillery pieces and 130 tanks per month ( and would be importing everything they could ). With hindsight , the window for Sea lion is illusionary even if the German's teleport the first wave, the invasion panic was just that , panic.

Which may have been the intent, persuade the British that the German army would be marching through Whitehall any day now and bring them to the negotiating table.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Which may have been the intent, persuade the British that the German army would be marching through Whitehall any day now and bring them to the negotiating table.
The only problem I have with Sealion as a bluff meant to get the British to negotiate, is that the bluff only works in the immediate aftermath of the fall of France. When panic was at its highest. If the Germans DON'T actually launch the invasion, within a few weeks, it gets seen for what it is, a bluff.
 
The only problem I have with Sealion as a bluff meant to get the British to negotiate, is that the bluff only works in the immediate aftermath of the fall of France. When panic was at its highest. If the Germans DON'T actually launch the invasion, within a few weeks, it gets seen for what it is, a bluff.
Not to mention, as the anxiety subsides a little bit and rational thought returns, at some point the fact that the British have retained naval superiority in the Channel presumably calms a few people down, at least at higher levels. At lower levels, of course, we're all off in the countryside searching for Huns dressed as nuns.
 
Question: Has anyone investigated the effect of German preparations for Sealion earlier as required?
This has been discussed at some length in previous threads.

The problem is that the amount of preparations necessary to actually undertake a major landing with something resembling the amphibious doctrine of the mid to late war Allies, say, would take years of prep work.

First, this requires that the Germans have the foresight to start planning for invading England in the event that they succeed in invading France. I would say this borders on irrational: you have to invest in the all-or-nothing gambit against France, because if you fail there, there's no point being ready to go in an invasion of England.

Secondly, to get all the landing ships, etc. that would make this a serious, credible threat is something the British would have noticed years before, as you were doing it. There's no way stuff like that could be aimed at anyone except Britain, so the British will (a) build up their sea defences even beyond what we see in our timeline, (b) invest pre-war in proper fortifications in southern England instead of madly scrambling to do this after France falls, and (c) leave more trained and equipped troops at home to man those defences in 1940.

In short, even if Germany starts preparing well in advance, Britain would probably counter those moves accordingly. This isn't some sort of superpower on the part of the British: it's just that amphibious operations are really, really hard, especially if you've never done them on such a large scale before (and the Germans haven't). Defending a beach is far, far easier than taking one.
 
That's actually what I was wondering about-if you have an earlier push to rpepare for sealion(say, someone in 30s Germany sees conflict with the british as possible and decides they need at least to be able to present a credible invasion threat), what does the British reaction look like? I've not seen _that_ investigated and I am really curious about the "counter moves" you describe. Does the UK invest more in sea defences(and does taht change the political mood), do they ride harder on Germany in the various crises, are they more likely to try and let one of the crises go to war to stop German aggression before it becomes a real threat? I keep on seeing "it wouldn't help Sealion" but the change seems itself interesting.
 
That's actually what I was wondering about-if you have an earlier push to rpepare for sealion(say, someone in 30s Germany sees conflict with the british as possible and decides they need at least to be able to present a credible invasion threat), what does the British reaction look like? I've not seen _that_ investigated and I am really curious about the "counter moves" you describe. Does the UK invest more in sea defences(and does taht change the political mood), do they ride harder on Germany in the various crises, are they more likely to try and let one of the crises go to war to stop German aggression before it becomes a real threat? I keep on seeing "it wouldn't help Sealion" but the change seems itself interesting.
That's an interesting question and I'm not precisely sure.

On the one hand, I would still say Germany has better things to do than prepare for an invasion of Britain prior to the outbreak of war, namely, to prepare for an invasion of France. That wasn't a foregone conclusion and, on the whole, was probably a far closer-run thing than Sea Lion could ever have been, the decisive victory notwithstanding. It doesn't do Germany much good if they dive into rapidly mass-producing a fleet of amphibious operations vessels and in the process get distracted from the possibility of rapidly conquering France.

To try and tackle your point head-on, though, it's noteworthy that the British generally did not invest in large armies the way the continental powers did. Partly this was because they had a large navy instead, of course, but they could have had a larger army, and they could have taken the fortification of lower England more seriously, too (the way the French did with their German border, aka the Maginot Line), instead of hastily cobbling this back together in mid-1940. But for the most part it was because they simply didn't need one: there was nobody seriously capable of invading England, so why bother maintaining a large army to deter them, when the navy already does that? You can send the BEF to France because the BEF isn't needed to defend England.

If, in contrast, it looks like Germany really could invade England, then it seems to me the British will spend those prewar years doing any or even all of those things: fortifying the south against invasion, possibly expanding their already sizeable armada of small armed vessels and destroyers useful for anti-invasion duties, and either expanding their army above that of our timeline or keeping more of it at home, again for anti-invasion duties, in 1940. None of this would make England the better of Germany in a fight on the continent, but it would probably be more than enough to restore the British advantage against an invasion by sea. All of these are probabilities, but on the whole, there are always going to be a lot more things that can go wrong with an amphibious invasion than with the defense against that invasion by a prepared defender. That defender just needs to have the patience and the intelligence necessary to push on the pain points.
 

Ian_W

Banned
If, in contrast, it looks like Germany really could invade England, then it seems to me the British will spend those prewar years doing any or even all of those things: fortifying the south against invasion, possibly expanding their already sizeable armada of small armed vessels and destroyers useful for anti-invasion duties, and either expanding their army above that of our timeline or keeping more of it at home, again for anti-invasion duties, in 1940.

Can I suggest a working rifle factory would be a good start :)
 
That's an interesting question and I'm not precisely sure.

On the one hand, I would still say Germany has better things to do than prepare for an invasion of Britain prior to the outbreak of war, namely, to prepare for an invasion of France. That wasn't a foregone conclusion and, on the whole, was probably a far closer-run thing than Sea Lion could ever have been, the decisive victory notwithstanding. It doesn't do Germany much good if they dive into rapidly mass-producing a fleet of amphibious operations vessels and in the process get distracted from the possibility of rapidly conquering France.

If, in contrast, it looks like Germany really could invade England, then it seems to me the British will spend those prewar years doing any or even all of those things: fortifying the south against invasion, possibly expanding their already sizeable armada of small armed vessels and destroyers useful for anti-invasion duties, and either expanding their army above that of our timeline or keeping more of it at home, again for anti-invasion duties, in 1940. None of this would make England the better of Germany in a fight on the continent, but it would probably be more than enough to restore the British advantage against an invasion by sea. All of these are probabilities, but on the whole, there are always going to be a lot more things that can go wrong with an amphibious invasion than with the defense against that invasion by a prepared defender. That defender just needs to have the patience and the intelligence necessary to push on the pain points.

Yea, that's why I suggested something like "a German military dude looks at the British-French relationship, figures on attacks on France, and works out that or even just decides if they want the UK not to go to war or at least to not be too dangerous they need to present at least a credible threat to the UK's territory itself" even if that's unlikely. The real question to me is "If the UK starts seeing Germany building up to be a threat, how does it react"? I was thinking of diplomatic consequences, especially because thinking Hitler is going to be statisfied with territory in Europe is rather off the table and if they think he's preparing for war with France/the UK then going harder on him might happen*. But what you're saying is interesting and has important bearing-does the UK being prepared enough that the are less fearful of invasion affect public confidence in teh government or willingness to take risks elsewhere. I'm mainly posting because it seems like discussion of this only comes up in relation to sealion and only as a forestalled possibility**. But it seems like a very interesting WI on its own because of how it changes behavior earlier.

RE: your comments on getting distracted from invading France, that would be interesting itself, if they get a bee in their bonnet about invading the UK and then as a result the invasion of France goes badly and it causes...issues.

** "it wouldn't have helped to prepare earlier because the UK would have just upped their own preparations" etc etc.
 
Yea, that's why I suggested something like "a German military dude looks at the British-French relationship, figures on attacks on France, and works out that or even just decides if they want the UK not to go to war or at least to not be too dangerous they need to present at least a credible threat to the UK's territory itself" even if that's unlikely. The real question to me is "If the UK starts seeing Germany building up to be a threat, how does it react"? I was thinking of diplomatic consequences, especially because thinking Hitler is going to be statisfied with territory in Europe is rather off the table and if they think he's preparing for war with France/the UK then going harder on him might happen*. But what you're saying is interesting and has important bearing-does the UK being prepared enough that the are less fearful of invasion affect public confidence in teh government or willingness to take risks elsewhere. I'm mainly posting because it seems like discussion of this only comes up in relation to sealion and only as a forestalled possibility**. But it seems like a very interesting WI on its own because of how it changes behavior earlier.

RE: your comments on getting distracted from invading France, that would be interesting itself, if they get a bee in their bonnet about invading the UK and then as a result the invasion of France goes badly and it causes...issues.

** "it wouldn't have helped to prepare earlier because the UK would have just upped their own preparations" etc etc.

Which general staff officer is going to go to Hitler in, say, 1938 and say, "Mein fuehrer, I know everybody in my office is hard at work figuring out plans for potential conflict with all of our neighbours, but I've had this brilliant idea that we should temporarily sideline the production of new tanks and pour all that money into building landing ships instead. Yes, I know we won't need them right away, and yes, I know we might need those tanks right away instead, but in the event that one day we successfully conquer France, then we could use them to invade Britain..."

On the diplomatic side, I know everyone likes to blame Chamberlain but I'm not quite sure whether the UK was in a position to be more aggressive diplomatically on its own -- e.g. presumably it won't make France more aggressive, and if France doesn't have their heart in it, the British can't go too far along on their own.

That said, it seems to me that if Britain and France were to push harder earlier, the Germans would be even less prepared for war than they were, and consequently things would go more poorly for them. Historically, the plan that caused France to cave in so quickly was late in the game -- so if, and this is extremely hypothetical, things kick off over the Sudetenland instead of over Poland, France probably wouldn't fall.

And if France doesn't fall then it really doesn't matter how many landing boats you have, you're still not going to invade Britain.

This is why I and others have argued many times that for a German planner it makes rational sense to focus on France, not Britain, and for a German general, it makes rational sense to focus on pushing deeper into France, not completing the defeat of the Allied pocket at Dunkirk. After all, those troops were leaving anyways, and you're going to look awful foolish if in your haste to push them into the sea just that little bit faster, if in doing so you give the French time to reorganize and hold the line.

Just sticking to the production of sea assets, though, the fact is that Britain has a larger stock than Germany at any time from 1918 on and that it can also produce more of them, and faster, than Germany. A naval race would be prohibitively expensive for both sides if it went to extremes, but Britain doesn't have to let Germany build up an advantage in that area and consequently they wouldn't. For Britain control of the seas is the first and most important line of defence, so they're not going to let it go easily.
 
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Yeah, I was thinking that it would only work if the staff assumed that there was no way to attack France without pulling Britain in. Was that OTL planned on or did they just assume they could defeat France before the British could really get involved? I know Hitler had strange ideas here.
 

Ian_W

Banned
Yeah, I was thinking that it would only work if the staff assumed that there was no way to attack France without pulling Britain in. Was that OTL planned on or did they just assume they could defeat France before the British could really get involved? I know Hitler had strange ideas here.

There really isn't a way you can plan to defeat France before the British can really get involved.

As to a British response to a German naval buildup, I'd suggest the Army establishes its rifle and artillery factories a little earlier - experience in WW1 showed it took 2 years to avoid a 'shell crisis' :).

The Air Force might build some more Swordfish, as they seem very well suited to night attacks on the lines of communication of any invader, while the Navy builds more of everything, as that's their natural response when challenged ...
 
Yeah, I was thinking that it would only work if the staff assumed that there was no way to attack France without pulling Britain in. Was that OTL planned on or did they just assume they could defeat France before the British could really get involved? I know Hitler had strange ideas here.
The opposite, actually. The original German plans, codenamed Yellow, called for something like the World War I-style offensive into France and its planners were seriously worried that this would grind to a halt and lead to stalemate pretty much in exactly the same way that, well, the World War I-style offensive did.

Hitler disliked this plan and, luckily or unluckily depending on which side you're on, it had to be hastily revamped after they realized the plans might have been captured by the Allies from a downed aircraft, of all things. The result was the so-called Manstein Plan, a rapid tank-led advance that hopefully would push deep enough, fast enough, and unexpectedly enough to throw the Allies into complete disarray and collapse the French front.

As it happened, this worked probably better than the Germans had any right to expect, and France fell within weeks. I think you could make a pretty decent case that even a moderately better-run French army could have stopped this offensive in its tracks, at which point Germany is up the creek and any fancy plans you might have made for a follow-on invasion of England are out the window anyways.

But you couldn't have known all that was going to happen in 1937, or 1938, or even 1939, if you were a German planner. If you fully expect that France is going to be a tough, all-consuming slog, then you're going to focus on that and leave the England plan for another day, which is precisely what happened. In retrospect it looks like a horrendous lack of planning on the part of the Germans, but really what's happened in mid-1940 is that they've just succeeded beyond all measure and now they're stuck trying to figure out what to do next.

At that point -- and that is why most people here have concluded Sea Lion is simply not plausible -- you've got an army that has never really taken amphibious warfare seriously in a large-scale, sustained way trying to improvise, in a matter of weeks, the invasion by sea of a country that happens to have the world's largest navy. For what it's worth, the British similarly let their land defences languish in the run-up to the war, and when France fell, there was a mad scramble on the British side too.
 
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