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

hipper

Banned
Plus the fact that several of the ports that the barges were gathered in, could be shelled by R-class battleships from their moorings. Not exactly an ideal situation for Germany

The Channel is 32 miles wide too far for a Battleship to shoot.
 

hipper

Banned
Not all of it. Parts of it are under 20 miles. Factor in where the ships and barges would be anchored/moored and they have only to shoot 16-18 miles

You are correct the narrowest point is 20.7 miles or about 36,000 yards but the two closest potrts are 32 miles apart. ...
 

FBKampfer

Banned
The Volksturm was just grabbing anyone left in Germany after they'd called pretty much every military aged man with the right number of eyes and limbs up. The British hadn't got down to the desperation levels Germany had in 1945 by 1940. The equivalents of the 1940 Home Guard in 1945 Germany had already been called up and were fighting the Allies somewhere. They were not a replacement for a proper army but they would have been a very effective defensive force of experienced soldiers (for the most part) if they had been called upon. These weren't old men and school kids, they were men in their 40s and 50s who had already fought in one World War, who were already experienced (if out of practice) with their weapons and they weren't facing either the logistic problems Germany had in 1945 or the overwhelming force that either the Soviets or the western Allies were putting into the field against the Volksturm.


They're light infantry from 1918 lacking any real support weapons, standard TOE, or training as a unit, tasked with holding what was (and would remain for most of the war) the army with the most experience going forward against riverlines and prepared defenses held and defended by prepared, supplied, and supported troops planning on fighting a modern war.

The Poles couldn't even hold the Germans for a full day. Against the best and most modern and well supplied armies England and France could field couldn't stop the mostly infantry force that the Germans put against them (though absolutely did slow them).

The Home Guard had rifles and not much else.

The very best Germany has will lead the assault, against Britan's throw away troops.


This is not to dismiss those men's courage or individual competency. But they're simply not equipped, prepared, or supported to hold, or even significantly delay, the Heer for more than a few hours.

Unless the cavalry is only a few hours from charging over the hill, by the end of the day, the Germans will hold about 10 to 20 miles in from their landing grounds.

And if the Germans have overcome the RN and RAF to the point an invasion is feasible (unless they catch the stupid-ball and just bum rush a division or two through the defenses), thats more than plenty for a foothold.
 
The very best Germany has will lead the assault, against Britan's throw away troops.

Until they run out of fuel, ammunition, food and medical supplies with their backs to the sea supported by a naval force barely capable of supplying their needs on a good day. That's a problem Germany has which is almost as serious as trying to beat the British in combat - their logistic system barely got them through their previous campaigns and now they've put thirty plus miles of very rough sea between their troops and their supply depots with a small force of barely seaworthy barges and tugs required to move follow on forces and battle casualty replacements to the UK, keep the troops on the ground supplied, evacuate the wounded and get wrecked AFVs and B vehicles back to repair depots.

To make Sealion work you need to find a way to give Germany the same naval force that the UK and US put together for D-Day, plus an air force good enough to gain air superiority over southern England plus keep an army strong enough to defeat Poland and France without making such a mess of civilian manufacturing that the people rise up and overthrow the government.

I don't see any way of Germany doing that unless the UK at some point decide not to bother being an Imperial power any more.

The reason why I think the Home Guard will win (or inflict enough delay that the regular British Army wins) is simple - they're not facing the Heer of France 1940, they're facing a small, badly supplied part of that force.
 
The Home Guard had rifles and not much else.

The very best Germany has will lead the assault, against Britan's throw away troops.

You think a German invasion of Britain would be able to supply much more than rifles to it's troops.

I'm operating under the following assumptions for any sealion

1. Germany manages to pull off a landing with invasion barges around 80% survival rate crossing the channeln the firsr wave
2. German invasion shipping has to cross the channel back to France tonpick up supplies/second wave
3. Point 2 above will take at least 3 days (bad barges with slow engines loading unloading in limited numbers of ports)
4. Returning to France and coming back to Britain will see the invasion shipping suffer further attrition, the second wave will land with half then men and supplies of the first.
5. A third wave is not possible before shipping is completely degraded.

So German logistics is terrible. Now imagine an engagement. A company of homeguard with rifles and a 1914 vintage heavy machine gun occupy a stone castle as a defensive strong point. A German formation of company strength has been tasked to occupy the position, their options are

1. Call artillery support which requires use of a finite resource (artillery fire missions use a lot of supplies in terms of weight)
2. Call an air strike.
3. Fight with small arms.

If either option 1 or 2 is selected the Germans are further stretching their lines of supply. If option 3 is chosen the home guard are facing the German army as a peer opponent.

If the home guard presents the Germans with this decision 200 times before the British army is in position the British army will probably face a German army that is out of supply or broken from assaulting positions with small arms.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
You're only supporting my point.

It's the logistics that will stop the Germans, and it would do so with or without the Home Guards. The reality is that the Home Guard was never anything more than a PR campaign that helped people feel better and think they were contributing. And it doesn't matter if Winston Churchill and Jesus himself say otherwise, because the only other thing they could do on their own was die well once the Germans came.


And as was my point earlier, if the Germans were ever able to overcove the logistics to make an invasion practical, then the Home Guard was going to get bent over a table. Why? Because a small force that has no supplies was the onlo thing that the home guard might be able to combat.


Any talk about the Home Guard is jingoistic dickwaving. Either time will solve the problem on its own, or the home guard is ineffective.
 

Ian_W

Banned
Any talk about the Home Guard is jingoistic dickwaving. Either time will solve the problem on its own, or the home guard is ineffective.

This is truly an OKW-level contempt for logistics.

If Germany is connected to it's enemy by a land border, forcing a scratch force to choose between using some supplies or making an unsupported infantry support is an irrelevancy for the Heer - they either get the supplies next week, or they do a probe and back off. It's not important.

Unfortunately, when those supplies need to go across a body of water using a navy they don't have, via an amphibious doctrine they don't have, using either specialised equipment they don't have or a port they don't have (*) and then get to the scratch force using horses, because thats what the German Army uses, it gets more complicated.

Without the Home Guard, operating without mobility and without heavy weapons, the German force would just keep marching to London, and that merely wears out shoe leather.

But if they have to fight on the way, even if its Home Guard, then they get to choose between being halted, expending supplies or expending men.

This is the idiocy regarding supply issues that caused the contempt for the Heer's "planning" for Sealion among the German Navy.

And it repeated again and again and again by wehraboos who should have learned better.

(*) You do realise that within the area the Luftwaffe can cover with fighters from France, there are three ports worth a damn - Dover, Portsmouth and London, right ?
 
German E-boat development was nothing to laugh at at least. Massing large swarms of these using anti-ship missiles (albeit the German ones were still very primitive at this point so as to probably preclude this) is exactly the kind of asymmetric thinking that could have potentially allowed the German navy to actually defeat the RN.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
This is truly an OKW-level contempt for logistics.

If Germany is connected to it's enemy by a land border, forcing a scratch force to choose between using some supplies or making an unsupported infantry support is an irrelevancy for the Heer - they either get the supplies next week, or they do a probe and back off. It's not important.

Unfortunately, when those supplies need to go across a body of water using a navy they don't have, via an amphibious doctrine they don't have, using either specialised equipment they don't have or a port they don't have (*) and then get to the scratch force using horses, because thats what the German Army uses, it gets more complicated.

Without the Home Guard, operating without mobility and without heavy weapons, the German force would just keep marching to London, and that merely wears out shoe leather.

But if they have to fight on the way, even if its Home Guard, then they get to choose between being halted, expending supplies or expending men.

This is the idiocy regarding supply issues that caused the contempt for the Heer's "planning" for Sealion among the German Navy.

And it repeated again and again and again by wehraboos who should have learned better.

(*) You do realise that within the area the Luftwaffe can cover with fighters from France, there are three ports worth a damn - Dover, Portsmouth and London, right ?


I have no contempt for logistics.

Everyone else seems to lack an appreciation of the fact that the British regulars could respond within a day or two, plenty quickly to prevent any sort of strategic success by the Germans.

If the Germans don't have the supplies to expend on the Home Army, then they never had the supplies to pose a threat in the first place.

If they haf the supplies to pose a threat, then they have the supplies to go through the home army like tissue paper.
 
German E-boat development was nothing to laugh at at least. Massing large swarms of these using anti-ship missiles (albeit the German ones were still very primitive at this point so as to probably preclude this) is exactly the kind of asymmetric thinking that could have potentially allowed the German navy to actually defeat the RN.

there was an interesting hydrofoil experiment VS8 http://german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/landingcrafts/vs8/index.html that in theory could transport a tank! on a pontoon in a bay in stern, flooded to unload. hydrofoils have never worked as advertised (AFAIK) however my question could a conventional S-boat have a similar cargo system? (although my question is actually for Med operations)

also there was a post-war evolution of S-boat that seems feasible earlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar-class_fast_attack_craft that could carry 23 mines, deployment of which was important duty of wartime S-boats but they could only carry 6 - 8 limiting their effectiveness.
 

Deleted member 94680

Although discussion of the Volksturm in regards to their lack of effectiveness is illuminating, it is not relevant to the Home Guard. The Volksturm were what was left after the Heer had called up everyone they deemed 'viable'. The Home Guard would be equivalent to Heer late-second or third line troops.


German E-boat development was nothing to laugh at at least. Massing large swarms of these using anti-ship missiles (albeit the German ones were still very primitive at this point so as to probably preclude this) is exactly the kind of asymmetric thinking that could have potentially allowed the German navy to actually defeat the RN.

There's always a reason to keep these threads going - they always throw up at least one comedy gem like this.
 
TBF, I think FBKampfer's post is perfectly on-base with what other people are saying-he's not saying "the home guard is irrelevant and they would fail to prevent a German win", he's saying "given that they were as they were, any situation where they could be relevant as a threat is one where the Germans have already been shafted by logistics and conversely if they're relevant than the Regular Army is getting called in anyways"-in other words, they're unlikely to play a decisive role either way.
 
Although discussion of the Volksturm in regards to their lack of effectiveness is illuminating, it is not relevant to the Home Guard. The Volksturm were what was left after the Heer had called up everyone they deemed 'viable'. The Home Guard would be equivalent to Heer late-second or third line troops.

There's always a reason to keep these threads going - they always throw up at least one comedy gem like this. Proof for the underlined (or are you just making arbitrary determinations with little to no value)?

There's always a reason to keep these threads going - they always throw up at least one comedy gem like this.

I said that the weapons tech was too primitive in so many words, not sure how that was funny. Something if the Nazis had survived they might have developed kind of like the Iranians. No where did I say that they could do this in the 40s.
 
I'd also point to Crete, where large numbers of 'the best the Germans had' were butchered by civilians using agricultural tools and muskets - much less rifles.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
German E-boat development was nothing to laugh at at least. Massing large swarms of these using anti-ship missiles (albeit the German ones were still very primitive at this point so as to probably preclude this) is exactly the kind of asymmetric thinking that could have potentially allowed the German navy to actually defeat the RN.
There's always a reason to keep these threads going - they always throw up at least one comedy gem like this.

I said that the weapons tech was too primitive in so many words, not sure how that was funny. Something if the Nazis had survived they might have developed kind of like the Iranians. No where did I say that they could do this in the 40s.
Well I would say, that the "rockets"-idea might/could be a bit of a stretch, though lesser, if such possibilities were looked into at earnest by the german military (of whatever branch) prior to the war.

However, a force of short of 100 E-boats even "only" armed with torpedos, maybe together with about 2 dozen subs, Typ II ones sufficient in this case, could pose quite a ... problematic encounter for the RN on its way down south with its heavy units to guard against an invasion

IMO what's more important than actual weapon systems of OTL is the "asymetric thinking" approach, @hammerdin brings up here, as part of a ATL development, that leads to landing/invasion attempt on the british main isle.
 

hipper

Banned
Well I would say, that the "rockets"-idea might/could be a bit of a stretch, though lesser, if such possibilities were looked into at earnest by the german military (of whatever branch) prior to the war.

However, a force of short of 100 E-boats even "only" armed with torpedos, maybe together with about 2 dozen subs, Typ II ones sufficient in this case, could pose quite a ... problematic encounter for the RN on its way down south with its heavy units to guard against an invasion

IMO what's more important than actual weapon systems of OTL is the "asymetric thinking" approach, @hammerdin brings up here, as part of a ATL development, that leads to landing/invasion attempt on the british main isle.

The Germans did not have 100 S boats in 1940 what would they have to give up to build them, hint something with Deisel engines.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
The Germans did not have 100 S boats in 1940 what would they have to give up to build them, hint something with Deisel engines.
True, but we are not talking of OTL.

And ... in ITTL, being more into the "asymetric thinking" of military power, the germans might have build more small units instead of some high-pressure-high-temperatur "steam boats" ... i.e. no "similia similibus" and you don't need at least the "later" twins.
(just first examples commin to my mind)
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
The "Sea Lion did not have a chance in hell to succeed" threads make me think - why the OTL panic then?
The excitable PM aside, the UK must have had some cool heads around ...
 
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