Could Britain Have Landed In Occupied Belgium During WW1?

AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

Britain intervened in the great war not due to direct german hostilities, or french begging, or Entente obligations, but for another reason. German actions in Belgium; their casus belli being defense of the weak (please ignore their empire.) However, almost all of Britain's involvement was on the same stretch of land as the french. What I want to know is, could british forces have landed separately from the main front and established a lasting beach head? Could they get lucky and damage german supply lines? Even if they're repelled, could the distraction give the Entente enough breathing room to hasten the victory?

I feel like this would have to be a colonial thing. Both between Britain's command seeing it as too risky for their proper boys to suffer through (1914-18 britain after all) and simply because of the needed manpower and complications. But I'm not entirely sure what else would go into a ww1 "d-day."
 

Dorknought

Against mass armies mobilised in days the British army was just too tiny. The Army was high quality when high quantity was needed. It needed to expand from 60 Battalions to 60 Divisions but that would take years. Britain would also need complete command of the sea, something that would also take years.

From: Friedman, Norman. Fighting the Great War at Sea .
Fisher’s friend and biographer Admiral R H Bacon described a crucial 18 November 1909 CID meeting. In the course of a crisis over Morocco, the French government had demanded that the British deploy 120,000 troops to the French border to deter the Germans. Fisher confirmed that he could provide the necessary transport. When pressed for further comment, he said that he had ‘nothing else to say that anyone present would want to hear’. When Prime Minister Asquith pressed him, he said that the Germans would stop at nothing to destroy that force and would do so, ‘Continental armies being what they are’. The army should be restricted to sudden descents on the coast, the recovery of Heligoland and the garrisoning of Antwerp. Fisher then pointed to the ten mile stretch on the Pomeranian coast near Berlin. Were the army to seize and entrench there, a million Germans would find occupation; ‘but to despatch British troops to the front in a Continental war would be an act of suicidal idiocy arising from the distorted view of war produced by Mr. Haldane’s speeches and childish arrangements for training Terriers [the Territorial Army]. After war broke out … the British Army should be administered as an annex to the Navy and that the present follies should be abandoned’. Asquith adjourned the meeting but presumably remembered Fisher’s comment. Admiral Sir R H Bacon, The Life of Lord Fisher of Kilverstone (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929), II, pp 182–3.
 

TDM

1). the dilemma is make it small to reduce potential loses but thus inherently limit it effects, or big to produce effects but risk massive casualties

2). It functionally going to be a worse Gallipoli campaign pushing it onto the colonial/empire troops will only piss off the relevent colonies/bits of empire

3). It will be hard to make work well because the lack of motorization of anything you land means they will functional have to walk from their landing sites to their targets, i.e it will be really hard to breakout and the Germans will be using the occupied belgium rail system to redeploy

4). Trying to run logistics through a beach head will be tough that's limit everything
 

Deleted member 2186

AltoRegnant said:
Britain intervened in the great war not due to direct german hostilities, or french begging, or Entente obligations, but for another reason. German actions in Belgium; their casus belli being defense of the weak (please ignore their empire.) However, almost all of Britain's involvement was on the same stretch of land as the french. What I want to know is, could british forces have landed separately from the main front and established a lasting beach head? Could they get lucky and damage german supply lines? Even if they're repelled, could the distraction give the Entente enough breathing room to hasten the victory?

I feel like this would have to be a colonial thing. Both between Britain's command seeing it as too risky for their proper boys to suffer through (1914-18 britain after all) and simply because of the needed manpower and complications. But I'm not entirely sure what else would go into a ww1 "d-day."
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The British planned for Operation Hush, the great landing of 1917 that never was.

 

AlanL

In 1914 as an alternative to landing & supplying the BEF via secure friendly ports in France: definitely not.

In 1916-17, in response to the increasing menace of U-Boats based in the occupied Belgian ports, plans for amphibious landings to take Zeebrugge in conjunction with overland offensives were seriously considered. This was part of what 3rd Ypres / Passchendaele was originally supposed to be about. See ch.10 of Friedman's Fighting the Great War at Sea
 

Riain

Banned
Operation Hush is a good example of what was possible; it was a full division complete with tanks and supported by Monitors but relied on success by the bulk of the Army was was an adjunct to that Army.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Riain said:
Operation Hush is a good example of what was possible; it was a full division complete with tanks and supported by Monitors but relied on success by the bulk of the Army was was an adjunct to that Army.
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Compare to Patton's leapfrog tactics in Sicily, but while those weren't divisional sized landings, they do apply pressure on the Front
 

Riain

Banned
marathag said:
Compare to Patton's leapfrog tactics in Sicily, but while those weren't divisional sized landings, they do apply pressure on the Front
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I read something ages ago about Italy joining the CP and how its long coastline would be very vulnerable to Anglo-French naval action. It's all about geography and the ability to bring sufficient forces to bear quickly enough.
 

Deleted member 2186

Mikestone8 said:
They could land all right - but the ensuing disaster would make Gallipoli look like a walk in the park.
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But as you read the comments in the articles, its was only going to be a division, so in the eyes of the higher ups, a lose they could afford.
 
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