Could Germany have invaded Britain in 1942/1943 if...

CalBear

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Sharlin,, not all carriers are offensive. Soviet Kiev class carriers were essentially bastion defence platforms, their Yak38 meant to keep MPA aircraft away, their Helis meant to hunt for NATO SSN tracking soviet SSBN and their missiles, like the GZ guns, meant to allow them to defend themselves against surface threats.
The KM (as seen by Reader) main role was to keep the Baltic and North Sea LOC open.



The Kiev class were not true carriers. They were sea control ships, what the Soviets called aviation cruisers. This is generally ignored in that "if it has planes it is a carrier" seems to be the mindset. Interestingly the U.S. LHA and LHD, all of which have more pure aircraft handling potential than the Kievs are virtually never called carriers.

The GZ, had she been completed, would have been used as an offensive platform. Keep in mind that this was a navy that sent out a 45,000 ton battleship to act as a commerce raider.
 
My claim was in regards to operations during the Blitz, not the Battle of Britain; the Luftwaffe could never win a campaign of air superiority missions. But it could maintain a night bombing campaign against British industry and cities without being crippled by attrition. The actual results will be negligible and not worth the losses, but it could still do it for another year at least. Aircraft loss rates for the Luftwaffe between December 1940 and June 1941 on all fronts amounted to 40% of its structure; large and dangerous in the long run, but still replaceable.

But again only at the expense of Barbarossa and we come back to the same problem that exists with pretty much all these scenarios. Prior to the outbreak of WWII Britain was not a strategic priority for Nazi Germany and there was no reason for it to become one. Even when Sealion was being planned the Germans had little faith in its practicality and that was in the aftermath of a series of wild Nazi successes and British defeats.

The reason I regard all these Sealion style threads as ASB is that to make the changes needed to make an attack on Britain work would require the Nazi's to have foreknowledge of the events of WWII; otherwise they make no sense given what we know of Hitler and his ambitions.
 

CalBear

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  • Germany did not invade Russia.
  • After the fall of France Germany focuses solely on defeating Britain.
  • Germany abandons Sea lion realising it is impossible in 1940
  • No DOW against USA
  • German focus on gaining air superiority rather than Blitz
  • Increases ship building - capital ships/destroyers/transport craft
  • Germany develops torpedo bombers and other methods of securing the English Channel (it has years to do this)
  • Massive increase in submarine production to attack Atlantic convoys.

This is not a sea lion thread!!

I understand that this would mean Germany reducing its expansion of the army, and Hitler would be unlikely to do this as he had his eyes fixed on Russia. But if Hitler had more accurate intel as to the strength of the Russians he may have decided to eliminate Britain first at all costs, even if it took a few years.


Well, the first question is WHY the Reich would literally take everything Hitler and his goons believed was necessary to provide security for the German People and to establish Greater Germany and discard it.

Hitler HAD to destroy Russia (more properly the Soviet Union). He believed to the core of his being that the Soviet state was a Jewish creation. He actually believed that Bolshevik = Jew and that the Jews were the root of all evil. He also needed the resources and open space for his vision of a continent spanning Greater German state.

This is where every one of these sorts of scenarios flounders. You can't begin to make a go of it if Hitler is around. If Hitler is not around you don't wind up with a Germany focused enough to even start the war.

I will only touch on a couple of the other points. Germany was a continental power. Unlike the UK (or oddly enough, the U.S. which views itself as a sea power despite spanning a continental land mass) Germany required a robust army, even just to defend itself. Without a large, well equipped Heer, Germany will never be able to get enough space or resources to support itself and the sort of force needed to cross the Channel.

You discuss "developing a torpedo bomber" like it was one of the most critical requirements for crossing the Channel. It wasn't, not even on the horizon of critical. Torpedo planes are great, assuming you can get a really good torpedo and sufficient air superiority to allow the aircraft to reach its target and remain unmolested for five to six minutes as its makes an attack run. It also requires highly trained crews, who have an unfortunate tendency to get slaughtered en masse when you finally deploy them. Against everything except capital ships you are better served to use dive bombers (something that the Luftwaffe was teeming with, since every medium bomber in the inventory had dive bombing capacity). What you need to develop, if anything, is a top grade long range single seat fighter that can escort bombers all the way to the Irish Sea/St. George's Channel. Without that, you are never going to gain air superiority. With out control of the air a cross channel assault is suicide.

You also can not both increase the u-boat fleet (and presumably sinkings) and avoid war with the U.S. It is an either/or binary solution. A robust u-boat campaign get you war with the U.S. Mortal lock.

Oh, BTW: this may not be a Sea Loin thread, but it is some form of Marine Mammal.
 
But again only at the expense of Barbarossa and we come back to the same problem that exists with pretty much all these scenarios. Prior to the outbreak of WWII Britain was not a strategic priority for Nazi Germany and there was no reason for it to become one. Even when Sealion was being planned the Germans had little faith in its practicality and that was in the aftermath of a series of wild Nazi successes and British defeats.

The reason I regard all these Sealion style threads as ASB is that to make the changes needed to make an attack on Britain work would require the Nazi's to have foreknowledge of the events of WWII; otherwise they make no sense given what we know of Hitler and his ambitions.

I never argued otherwise. My point was that the best Germany could achieve in a long term air campaign against Britain was some material damage (Which wouldn't even make up for attrition, much less win the war) and by 1942-43 would have to halt the campaign lest the Luftwaffe destroy itself. IE, Germany cannot defeat Britain with any variation of air campaign.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I understand that this would mean Germany reducing its expansion of the army, and Hitler would be unlikely to do this as he had his eyes fixed on Russia. But if Hitler had more accurate intel as to the strength of the Russians he may have decided to eliminate Britain first at all costs, even if it took a few years.


UK imports 1/3 or more of food, almost all petroleum products, lots of other vital stuff. Here is the key concept to any invasion by Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, USA, Imperial Japan or whoever, any power that is at war with the UK and has the military ability to invade the UK will not need to invade. UK will surrender. The control of the seas which is a prerequisite for invasion will break the UK.

I have seen different numbers on how much food is on shelves and warehouses at a time, but lets assume an often quoted figure of 4 weeks. If longer, you just add to initial period. After about 6 weeks (4 weeks food stretched), there is only domestic grown food. Then people start burning body fat, which will last a period of weeks. Then we see a big spike in deaths which will go back to baseline once about 1/3 of UK dies of hunger.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I think a much more interesting question would be how would British strategy change in 1940 if they realized Sealion was impossible? That the German invasion threat was essentially a bluff?


That is an easy one. You accept that in a worst case scenario, you end up losing a lot of cruisers in the channel. You realize that air power can't break you with that era technology without a huge number of breaks, but it can do a lot of damage, so you do have to build up fighter command. But you do have extra land resources, bomber resources, and to a lesser extent naval resources. You task your bombers to anti U-boats. You don't strip your Asian commands. You build up Africa faster. Even as blitz is going on, you are switching production lines to the types of things need for England to take the offensive in a few years. You put all but one of your best land commanders on overseas commands where there may be fighting. You units in UK are not task to defending the coast, but are in training status with 48-96 hour stand to time (Rodeo status seems like military term). You are splitting up singe regiments to find cadre for 3-6 regiments filled with new recruits.

So basically, instead of OTL where once Russia is invaded, you end up with way too many short ranged fighters, too many units in UK, and to some extent, lets now figure out how to build to win on land, you are making the production decision made in mid-1941 over Autumn of 1940.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Parts of his discussions could become viable if the "invasion" aspect is not the focus. One interesting discussion is the evolution of the air warfare btw the LW and the RAF in a scenario were Germany does not invade Russia in 1941 but tries instead to keep up pressure on Britain by air while maintaining a defensive posture east. That might be the best way to keep this thread interesting.

KM centred threads are largely ASBish because German geography and the huge delay it would start any naval race with make it virtually impossible for Germany to challenge RN superiority within the relevant period.
And the KM never contemplated that. The Z plan viewed for the twin goals of superiority over the Soviet Baltic (mostly) and Northern Fleets while retaining a commerce raiding capability. That's why the GZ was such a strange design, being meant, like the soviet Kiev class carriers of the 70s, to support bastion defence or assist Surface Action Groups.
In fact, the Z Plan KM looks a lot like the 70/80s soviet navy, with much the same goals and limitations when facing the Western navies.


Agreed. And a lot of this is dictated by ports and geography. When I look at a post WW1 Imperial Navy in a clean WW1 Central Powers win, I kept being struck by how much my thought process lead to a navy much like the Soviets Navy. And it comes from similar strategic needs. One is that large land powers draw there resources in from their own land, be it the Soviet Union, MittelEuropa, or Greater Nazi Germany. The UK or any island based power, has to keep the sea lanes open. A land base power has to keep any power AWAY from it railroads and coastal shipping. So the UK must be able to protect a freighter from New Zealand to England. A land power needs to be able to keep you weapons from hitting coastal waterways and ports. And this can be as limited area as a few 10's of miles safe buffer from the coast line. Second, you lack a large system of bases to use your fleet from. So even if I ASB and give the Germans a navy the size of the UK navy, and the same quality men, the Germans will have trouble projecting power to the coast of Spain, much less the South Atlantic. Third, the UK navy is hugely expensive. When I look at cost of ships, things like USA carrier groups or UK BB groups and the associated port budget is huge compared to the cheaper options. Sure the USS Enterprise is powerful with 80 or so planes. But I can have 240 land based naval aviation planes for much less than the Enterprise cost. And if we just look at the fight, it is pretty clear to me that 240 planes of the quality of the US Marine service airwing win over a single carrier. And they have a lot more staying power. One to 5 bombs will cripple or kill a carrier or at least mean dock work. 5 bombs hitting one of a dozen airfields with my 240 planes is fixed within hours.

to me at least, easy way to call how to spend German naval budget. Now when you suddenly get all these great French ports to use, sure I want a different navy. But Germany does not have the geography of France. Too many sealion threads assume you have a united Germany and France planning to take on British Empire.
 

Ian the Admin

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And I find this morbid fascination with the destruction of Great Britain highly offensive. I would put it in the same category with those who post Confederate victory threads in pre 1900. They may spin a gloss of intellectual curiosity but there's all too often an unhealthy fascination with a thoroughly unpleasant regime underlying it.

You're offended by "WI the bad guys win"? You're accusing people who post about the single most popular WI in all of alternate history of being Nazi supporters?

That's way out of line. This is an official warning. Stay away from Sealion threads if you can't refrain from ridiculous insults in them.
 

Ian the Admin

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When you're new to a party and the first thing you do is shit in the punchbowl, what do you think is going to happen?



No. What you actually did was deliberately ignore the sticky at the top of this forum and what you actually did was deliberately lie when you claimed this wasn't a Sealion thread.

That sticky was put there for a reason. That sticky was put there to prevent special snowflakes from posting threads like this one.

The rational discussions have happened here before, have happened over and over and over and over until the membership here became sick to death of them. That is why there is a sticky.

NOTHING you suggested is new. NOTHING you suggested hasn't been examine and refuted dozens of times over. NOTHING you suggested was worth starting a thread.

Is it asking too much to read the sticky? Apparently so.

Well that was bizarre. You just threw a spectacularly insulting rant at a new poster for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

You're kicked for a week.
 
If not doing Barbarossa or Sealion it would make sense for Germany to invade the Middle East for which either they have to have Turkey as an ally or Turkey must be invaded first. This option has a greater chance of success given the Royal Navy and RAF.

Germany can als choose to concentrate on the Battle of the Atlantic aiming to starveBritain into submission.

If both these operations go reasonably well and the Churchill government falls a new government might be more willing to negotiate with Hitler.
 
You're offended by "WI the bad guys win"? You're accusing people who post about the single most popular WI in all of alternate history of being Nazi supporters?

That's way out of line. This is an official warning. Stay away from Sealion threads if you can't refrain from ridiculous insults in them.

I apologize for losing my temper and I accept I went over the top but honestly how many of these Sealion and Neo-Sealion threads deliver anything uself or original? It's the same PODs, the same 20-20 hindsight, time and again from posters who haven't read the sticky on the subject. It may indeed be the most common WI but I think its anything but popular on this board...
 
The Kiev class were not true carriers. They were sea control ships, what the Soviets called aviation cruisers. This is generally ignored in that "if it has planes it is a carrier" seems to be the mindset. Interestingly the U.S. LHA and LHD, all of which have more pure aircraft handling potential than the Kievs are virtually never called carriers.

The GZ, had she been completed, would have been used as an offensive platform. Keep in mind that this was a navy that sent out a 45,000 ton battleship to act as a commerce raider.

And promptly lost it...
I don't think the GZ is a true carrier either. The correct term, in my view, would be "large aviation cruiser" . No other carrier built as such (I'm excluding the conventions from BC/BB) had such a serious anti surface gun battery. And if you disregard the Kievs, the follow on Kuzetnovs were equally defensive in nature, its aircraft being limited to air to air weapons by take of weight weight constraints and lots of space taken up by Surface to surface missiles.
 
Fascinating idea that Hitler killing out of hatred was even worse than Stalin/Mao killing out of political paranoia. (I have wondered if Hitler winning WWII would have been no worse than Stalin in OTL)

As for Germany focusing on the USSR instead of Britain, wasn't Nazi ideology blinding them to tactical/strategical reality a major reason they lost the war?

The LW would mostly stick to OTL equipment. The thing they lacked the most (like anyone else at the time except the IJN) was a fighter that had the range to escort the bombers all the way and could engage other fighters. Since both sides developed their fighters quite fast OTL, it would be Bf109F and FW190 vs Spitfire V. This gives the Germans and edge until the Spitfire IX comes along.

I thought the US' P-51 Mustang was the first fighter able to escort long-range bombers, and that didn't come around until late war.

If not doing Barbarossa or Sealion it would make sense for Germany to invade the Middle East for which either they have to have Turkey as an ally or Turkey must be invaded first. This option has a greater chance of success given the Royal Navy and RAF.

Germany can als choose to concentrate on the Battle of the Atlantic aiming to starveBritain into submission.

If both these operations go reasonably well and the Churchill government falls a new government might be more willing to negotiate with Hitler.

Indeed, wasn't oil one of the Nazi's major logistical/economic/industrial problems OTL? It seems that invading the Middle East would help with that.

How much would Britain and France's Middle Eastern colonial possessions get in the way? Would approaching Egypt from the east be more effective than North Africa in OTL?
 
Not all the large commerce raiders died, don't forget the Admiral Scheer was active in the Indian Ocean and survived to be "sunk" at Kiel

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
  • Germany did not invade Russia.
  • After the fall of France Germany focuses solely on defeating Britain.
  • Germany abandons Sea lion realising it is impossible in 1940
  • No DOW against USA
  • German focus on gaining air superiority rather than Blitz
  • Increases ship building - capital ships/destroyers/transport craft
  • Germany develops torpedo bombers and other methods of securing the English Channel (it has years to do this)
  • Massive increase in submarine production to attack Atlantic convoys.

This is not a sea lion thread!!

I understand that this would mean Germany reducing its expansion of the army, and Hitler would be unlikely to do this as he had his eyes fixed on Russia. But if Hitler had more accurate intel as to the strength of the Russians he may have decided to eliminate Britain first at all costs, even if it took a few years.

Tying the Soviets into the Axis was eminently possible and favoured by some of the Nazi high command. The problem would be making sure that Stalin does not stab them in the back when they attack Britain.

Similarly there were some significant voices who wanted to tie Vichy France into the Axis so that would be a possibility as well.

Some of the other points are asking for Germany to do EXACTLY what it needs to do to win. The problem with this is the lack of central organisation in the Luftwaffe and the lack of co-operation between the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine. Sorting that out is going to take something, considering the personalities involved.

IMHO don't bother to build capital ships. Build something that can take capital ships out. The Germans don't need battleships in the Channel, what they need is the absence of British battleships and carriers.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
For the oil to be in NAZI hands you would need to butterfly case yellow and case white.So no invasion of Poland and no battle of France, Barbarossa would have to happen but not as OTL.
 
I thought the US' P-51 Mustang was the first fighter able to escort long-range bombers, and that didn't come around until late war.

No, the Zero was the first. The IJN needed a long range fighter and couldn't build a twin engined heavy one for carrier use, so they built a single engined one that could, for a while, outfight opposing fighters.
 
I apologize for losing my temper and I accept I went over the top but honestly how many of these Sealion and Neo-Sealion threads deliver anything uself or original? It's the same PODs, the same 20-20 hindsight, time and again from posters who haven't read the sticky on the subject. It may indeed be the most common WI but I think its anything but popular on this board...

Just ignore them and let the new members have fun among themselves. We have the same problem with politicians in my country, every new prime minister wannabe recycles the same old ideas that have failed again and again and ignores all criticism. At least Sealioners can't raise taxes or "reorganise the public services":rolleyes:
 
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