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

Once you add the F6F you can also pull in the F4U (for my money the BEST all around performer of the war, although the Spitfire gets my nod as the best airframe simply due to flexibility and upgrade capacity). 500+ mile combat radius on internal fuel with another 250 or so on tap with extra tanks (flying from a ground strip, couldn't get into the air from a deck with that much load)

As any of our resident Aviation Experts ever did a POD were the USAF adopts the Corsair and uses in the ETO?
 
For Germany to invade Great Britain in 1940, 1941 or 1942 it would have needed to have planned for invading Great Britain in the course of a major war. Which it hadn't.

Even if they had planned an invasion, they did not have time to convert the Reischmarine, which was essentially a coastal defence force into a navy capable of amphibious landings on a hostile shore. Before the Anglo-German naval agreement, Germany was only allowed to have 6 Panzershiffs (10000t max displacement each), 6 cruisers (6000t max), 12 destroyers (800t max) and 12 torpedo boats (200t max), no subs. Another large handicap was that they were only allowed to have 15000 men.
So not only would they have to enact an unprecedented shipbuilding program, they would have to train a whole new generation of personnel to man those newly build ships. It could not be done in less than 5 years, with the recources Germany had at it's disposal.

There's no earthly reason why the Nazis couldn't have built long range bombers with the range and bomb load to destroy RAF bases and Royal Navy capital ships and the range to reach Scapa Flow. They didn't, because they had limited resources and doing so would divert those resources from the main event, which was combat support aircraft for the fight against the USSR. And because the decision to develop those aircraft --and even longer range aircraft that could reach the United States or Siberia would have needed to have been taken in the mid 1930s.

There was one, named Herman Göring and his pet project the Schnellbomber. In the early and mid 30's bomber development outpaced fighter developement and the general idea was that multiple engine bombers would allways outrun single engine fighters. Göring latched on to the idea like a leech and failed to see that the development of high speed fighters like the Hurricane and Spitfire invalidated the concept.

For that matter, the Germans might have been able to tunnel under the English Channel in the course of a year or two, branching out and emerging in multiple places in Kent to create a bridgehead in England. That too would require forethought and resources diverted from the USSR war.
Unlikely since it took 2 years with equipement 50 years more advanced, while digging from 2 sides simultanious. It would also assume a quick victory against France, which even the most optimistic Wehrmacht general did not see even as late as '39. And lastly the amounts of excavated dirt would provide for a visual clue for what they were doing.

The fact of the matter is that Hitler was totally surprised, dismayed and nonplussed at continued British resistance after the fall of France. That was simply not supposed to happen. Not with the Cliveden Set sympathetic to the Nazi Cause in the UK. Not with the Nazis offering the UK liberal terms including keeping the British Empire if only it would stay out of the European continent and Russia which was none of Great Britain's business anyway. The Conservative Government was supposed to fall and a new British Government was supposed to negotiate an armistice wih Germany. Instead, Germany got Churchill and what was apparently mindless defiance--after the Germans even allowed the British Expeditionary Force to go home minus it's equipment at Dunkirk instead of cutting it off from evacuation by sea, which the Germans could have done.
Except that the Nazis never offered any terms. Hoping your opponent would just roll over and surrender isn't mindless defiance of the UK, its clueless optimism of the Nazis. Hitler hoped the UK would acquiesce Nazi dominance of the continent, while limiting itself as a global naval empire. He failed to see the value attributed to treaty commitment which made for 2 very large blindspots:
1) Any peace agreement made, would have little value since Hitler allready proved he violated them at whim
2) A peace agreement under those terms would be seen as a British betrayal of it's allies for it's own self-preservation, something that could cause a landslide in Commonwealth and diplomatic relations.
 
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.
The only reason the Zero got anywhere at all is because most of the pilots who went against it in the early days assumed it was built like everyone else's fighters, ie, with armour, self-sealing tanks, radios, etc. If they'd realised its weaknesses earlier A6Ms would have fallen like flies.
 

sharlin

Banned
Also don't forget that for the most part, sea planes were generally inferior (always inferior if you're the RN until 1944) than land based planes so it was assumed that the Zero would just be another seaborne fighter plane and not that great. Throw in some spicey racism and steriotyping and ignoring intelligence reports and it all adds up to a real kick in the nuts when it turns out that the zero is as good as most land planes if not better.

Until you hit one.
 
The only reason the Zero got anywhere at all is because most of the pilots who went against it in the early days assumed it was built like everyone else's fighters, ie, with armour, self-sealing tanks, radios, etc. If they'd realised its weaknesses earlier A6Ms would have fallen like flies.

The problem was that they couldn't hit it. They still tried. Your point would only be valid if allied pilots though "Oh, its got armour and SSFT, so I won't try to shoot it down"
Zeros got high scores in China and over the PAcific because they could get to a firing position while their oppnents couldn't. The one thing allied pilots didn't know about the zero that would have been useful was its slow diving speed.
 
The problem was that they couldn't hit it. They still tried. Your point would only be valid if allied pilots though "Oh, its got armour and SSFT, so I won't try to shoot it down"
Zeros got high scores in China and over the PAcific because they could get to a firing position while their oppnents couldn't. The one thing allied pilots didn't know about the zero that would have been useful was its slow diving speed.

Well that was the point; they kept trying to dogfight it. Once they developed tactics exploiting that poor dive performance the Zero's effectiveness was eroded even before the newer US planes like the Hellcat were introduced.
 
Well that was the point; they kept trying to dogfight it. Once they developed tactics exploiting that poor dive performance the Zero's effectiveness was eroded even before the newer US planes like the Hellcat were introduced.

And the quality of IJN pilots degraded as the war went on, while allied pilots training just got better, etc.
 
Well that was the point; they kept trying to dogfight it. Once they developed tactics exploiting that poor dive performance the Zero's effectiveness was eroded even before the newer US planes like the Hellcat were introduced.
I thought it was team tactics like the Thach Weave that negated the Zero's superior maneuverability.
 
The problem was that they couldn't hit it. They still tried. Your point would only be valid if allied pilots though "Oh, its got armour and SSFT, so I won't try to shoot it down"
Oh they hit them right enough, but they couldn't turn with them, with the zero used to its advantage trying to draw American fighters into dog-fights.

Zeros got high scores in China and over the PAcific because they could get to a firing position while their oppnents couldn't. The one thing allied pilots didn't know about the zero that would have been useful was its slow diving speed.
And its manouverability, if they'd known that they wouldn't have tried to dog-fight with it, and would have gone with hit-and-run tactics instead, which they did in the later war IIRC.]

And the quality of IJN pilots degraded as the war went on, while allied pilots training just got better, etc.
That helped, but even if the Japanese had been able to keep up with training, once the Americans figured out the Zero's strengths and weaknesses they'd still have been screwed.

Back on the topic, I wonder if they could get the Italians to build some decent landing-craft for them, preferably ones that are small enough (or can be disassembled sufficiently) that they can be sent over the Alps by train?
 
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Oh they hit them right enough, but they couldn't turn with them, with the zero used to its advantage trying to draw American fighters into dog-fights.

And its manouverability, if they'd known that they wouldn't have tried to dog-fight with it, and would have gone with hit-and-run tactics instead, which they did in the later war IIRC.]

That helped, but even if the Japanese had been able to keep up with training, once the Americans figured out the Zero's strengths and weaknesses they'd still have been screwed.

Back on the topic, I wonder if they could get the Italians to build some decent landing-craft for them, preferably ones that are small enough (or can be disassembled sufficiently) that they can be sent over the Alps by train?

Matt, by hitting I meant scoring hits on the target. Not just trying. The manoeuvrability is what allowed the Zero to get into a firing position. Hit and run tactics are not easy without a significant speed advantage. Guys flying Buffaloes had very little options against Zeros. But okay enough of out of topic. This type of threads do tend to become a substitute for chat...
 
Back on the topic, I wonder if they could get the Italians to build some decent landing-craft for them, preferably ones that are small enough (or can be disassembled sufficiently) that they can be sent over the Alps by train?

Siebel ferries were built in Germany and shipped en masse to the Med where they where used very effectively in amphibious evacuations from Tunisia and Sicily. I suppose they would have been effective going the other way as well.

Now, back off topic again, please.
 
With pleasure. How big would butterflies have to be to have the Corsair selected for Air Force as well as navy and Marine use and deployed to England to tangle with FW190s?

There was one of those flies that appeared in Godzilla movies. About that big. CB's opinion excepted, the F4U-1 and the FW-190A8 perfomance numbers were very similar, range aside. The Mustang was twice as easy and much cheaper to build, and easier to fly. Manufactured at 2 factories, the P-51 outnumbered the F4U, built at 3 factories, by a factor of two-ish. Grumman used to keep track of Mustang numbers because of the proximity of output volume.

The Corsair had a vicious stall. It used to flip over and crash into the ground. This was not fixed by wing-washing, which is hard, but by adding spoilers so that it crashed into the ground upright. 190 or 189 Corsairs were lost to enemy air combat, 139 to ground fire. 164 were shot up on ground or deck. 230 operational losses on missions, without enemy action. 692 losses in non-combat operational losses.(Wiki-numbers) The Corsair was the Sopwith Camel of its day. With vastly greater usage, vastly greater wastage. That wastage included pilots.

Production problems would include building several more factories for airframes, and diverting additional sorely needed R-2800s from additional production or alternate aircraft. That's my nickel's worth. We don't use pennies any more.
 
Well that was the point; they kept trying to dogfight it. Once they developed tactics exploiting that poor dive performance the Zero's effectiveness was eroded even before the newer US planes like the Hellcat were introduced.

And I've rarely heard it said but the zero was really a very slow plane and with a top speed of 330 mph, could barely hope to outrun the F4F. The engine wasn't that strong to begin with but they stuck with it and even with later refinements, the plane remained under-armored, under-armed and still couldn't do much better than 340. If you're brining a lightly built plane that can't dive well to fight enemies with more firepower, good durability and in greatly superior numbers, you're going to want to at least be able to run.
 
And I've rarely heard it said but the zero was really a very slow plane and with a top speed of 330 mph, could barely hope to outrun the F4F. The engine wasn't that strong to begin with but they stuck with it and even with later refinements, the plane remained under-armored, under-armed and still couldn't do much better than 340. If you're brining a lightly built plane that can't dive well to fight enemies with more firepower, good durability and in greatly superior numbers, you're going to want to at least be able to run.

I've heard it said that the F-4F was a very slow aircraft that could only outrun a Zeke below 1,000 feet or in a bunt dive manoeuver using its higher Vne speed. Where the Wildcats prevailed, and they didn't always, was in team tactics of mutual coverage, and the use of a voice com radio.
 
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.

Or, for that matter, to make France fall, which was a requisite in the original post.
Germany and whatever the German government is would need an all-consuming hatred for Britain to drive its post-1918 history towards becoming a naval power. That's a 1918 POD. On the contrary the poster requires a 1940 POD. If we go with the 1918 POD, instead, then Germany probably does not even get to get Czechoslovakia, let alone Poland and France with Belgium and Holland.
As a consolation prize, the new boosted Kriegsmarine can probably take Norway at a lower cost, if it acts quickly. Good deal.

Meanwhile, given the decade-long naval buildup of Germany, Britain does the same. No London naval agreement. The Royal Navy one-ups German construction programs. More aircraft for Coastal Command. And so on and so forth, as already discussed in innumerable old threads.

The final alternative is for Germany to switch from land power to naval power in 1940. That will take, say 10 years. Meanwhile, they have to attack the Atlantic sea lanes all the time, and sooner rather than later - say in early 1942 - they will sink one US Navy warship too many and allow the USA to declare war on them.
Then there is the raw materials' issue. By early 1941, Germany was dependent on Soviet supplies, which they were not paying for. Give Stalin one more year, and he will feel secure enough to close the taps.
All things already discussed in innumerable old threads.
 
I've heard it said that the F-4F was a very slow aircraft that could only outrun a Zeke below 1,000 feet or in a bunt dive manoeuver using its higher Vne speed. Where the Wildcats prevailed, and they didn't always, was in team tactics of mutual coverage, and the use of a voice com radio.
With all the talk of the Zero and its comparative flight characteristics vs. US aircraft I thought some people might be interested in the linked US intelligence report "Flight Characteristics of the Japanese Zero Fighter" distributed in December 1942. It contains some nice comparisons.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/japan/intelsum85-dec42.pdf
 
the key to sea lion threads is...

There is a simple solution to all the sea lion problems and I expect someone else has already sugested it, but just in case, here it goes.
The POD is that Pangea never splits up, and everyrthing else is just like OTL:D

2_-pangea_245.gif
 
Siebel ferries were built in Germany and shipped en masse to the Med where they where used very effectively in amphibious evacuations from Tunisia and Sicily. I suppose they would have been effective going the other way as well.

I doubt they would have been as effective in the Channel. Average tidal current in the Channel is 5kn, while in the Med is only 1kn. With that ferry's base top speed of 7kn and it's low freeboard I don't see it doing well at all. A Channel crossing craft would need to be something sturdier.

Or, for that matter, to make France fall, which was a requisite in the original post.
Germany and whatever the German government is would need an all-consuming hatred for Britain to drive its post-1918 history towards becoming a naval power. That's a 1918 POD. On the contrary the poster requires a 1940 POD. If we go with the 1918 POD, instead, then Germany probably does not even get to get Czechoslovakia, let alone Poland and France with Belgium and Holland.
As a consolation prize, the new boosted Kriegsmarine can probably take Norway at a lower cost, if it acts quickly. Good deal.

Meanwhile, given the decade-long naval buildup of Germany, Britain does the same. No London naval agreement. The Royal Navy one-ups German construction programs. More aircraft for Coastal Command. And so on and so forth, as already discussed in innumerable old threads.

A 1918 Pod, so no Versailles? Consequently no scuttling of the HSF? It could work, but it would produce butterflies larger than Zeppelins.

The final alternative is for Germany to switch from land power to naval power in 1940. That will take, say 10 years. Meanwhile, they have to attack the Atlantic sea lanes all the time, and sooner rather than later - say in early 1942 - they will sink one US Navy warship too many and allow the USA to declare war on them.
Then there is the raw materials' issue. By early 1941, Germany was dependent on Soviet supplies, which they were not paying for. Give Stalin one more year, and he will feel secure enough to close the taps.
All things already discussed in innumerable old threads.
Stalin would have happily supplied the Germans as long as they kept their focus on the UK. The longer those 2 would tire each other out, the better it would have been for the USSR.
 
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