German airborne invasion of Britain

If they'd only built these earlier and in quantity.............................

If you are going to swim at least swim in style....

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A Type VII has a maximum beam of 6.2 m, even if you could add almost 5m on either side of that with the track (raise it to 16m), you'd still need more than 2000 boats to make the crossing. At least if you built a causeway or tunnel the RAF wouldn't be able to take it out with training aircraft.

One of the training aircraft standing by for the purpose.

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I wandered into a thread on another board a few weeks ago where it had degenerated into making bridges by linking U-boats together........


What about firing robot Nazi terminators by cannon across the Channel to Dover? Do I have to think of everything myself?


How about undertaking smaller scale invasions at battalion or regiment strength, without bothering to establish air superiority, in order to draw the RAF Bomber Command into the Channel where it can be annihilated wholesale? Oh wait…that actually sounds a little on the plausible side. The Nazi terminator thing then.
 
The inherent difficulty in an airborne operation, especially one at the scale necessary to invade Great Britain, (which would involve thousands of paratroopers,) is organization. Hitting the ground and assembling is one of the most confusing and God forsaken frustrating processes I have ever undertaken in my entire military career, and that's WITH modern communication equipment, even including cell phones (which are usually forbidden in training for obvious reasons.) The more men you add, the more difficult this process becomes.
I’d just assumed that WW2 paratroopers trained for this by being randomly dropped in training and then building ad-hoc squads on the fly.

How did the Fallschirmjager pull off Crete given this level of obstacle?


By fighting a real war with all its complications, unexpected turns, and friction, against an opponent that was quite confused and distracted because it had no access to timely intelligence. You know - fighting in real life and not on paper.
 
What about getting the early incarnation of Felix Baumgartner to lead a parachute jump from high altitude and zip through the AA defences at the speed of sound and then they could land with their space suits still on and pretend to be Aliens.

Panic would ensue and resistance would be futile.
 
Deploying large amounts of people far behind the battle lines and without any chance of having friendlies reinforce them in the next three to four days is a very round-about way of pointlessly killing well-armed, well-trained men. One might as well let them jump without parachutes.

'Cause really, every time that happened during the Second World War, said paratroopers were in a lot of trouble and were only saved from complete annihilation by their incredible training and experience. Just look at German landings on Crete and near The Hague, or even the 101st on the other side of the Douve.

Furthermore, the Fallschirmjager almost didn't pull off Crete. Look at the casualty rate. It is heinous and unfortunately proportionate to how ineffective German airborne operations were.
Which is a bit obvious considering they were the first ones to do it and didn't know what not to do. German airborne operations in the Netherlands were one half utter disaster (attack on The Hague), and one half complete success (Waalhaven and Moerdijk). I do agree with the rest of your analysis.
 
How about undertaking smaller scale invasions at battalion or regiment strength, without bothering to establish air superiority, in order to draw the RAF Bomber Command into the Channel where it can be annihilated wholesale?
Given that the RN can bring destroyers to the party, it's doubtful that would do any better, especially as Fighter command would offer the bombers cover, and might well be doing a bit of bombing themselves on the side.
 
A Type VII has a maximum beam of 6.2 m, even if you could add almost 5m on either side of that with the track (raise it to 16m), you'd still need more than 2000 boats to make the crossing. At least if you built a causeway or tunnel the RAF wouldn't be able to take it out with training aircraft.

If the Germans had 2000 operational U-Boats they wouldn't need to invade; that many could quite effectively blockade the British isles and neutralize any British threat, as well as decimate the US Atlantic Fleet once we enter the war.

At least until the British launch their airborne invasion of Germany, of course.:rolleyes:
 
Oh I've tried to model a cross-Channel causeway too!

Assuming a causeway 31 km long, 50 m high on average, 50 m across at the top (give a bit of space to drive around bomb/shell craters) and 150 m across at the bottom (45 degree angle of slope, maybe still a bit steep in practice) gives a volume of 170 million cubic metres and a mass around 425 million tonnes!

If we then assume some sort of system of continual deposition of rubble brought in by trains, capable of dumping 5 tonnes of material per second, then it would take less than three years for Der Grossecausevay to be built!

All you need then is protect the entire thing from the inevitable carpet-bombing and railway gun bombardment. :eek:
 
If the Germans sent in their troops during the darkness then more would be on the ground by daybreak since fighters didnt do to well in the darkness.

How about first bombing Southhampton or Dover by day and then use the burning houses as big flares for the paratrooper invasion. Docks captured more or less intacts and Germany sends in regular ferrys with tanks and supplies plus more men
 
Right, so by daybreak half your troopers will have landed on roofs, snagged in trees and whatnot, and a good portion of your weapons will be in the hands of the enemy becuase the canisters landed away from where they should have, like in someone's back yard. Pure genius.
 
If the Germans sent in their troops during the darkness then more would be on the ground by daybreak since fighters didnt do to well in the darkness. How about first bombing Southhampton or Dover by day and then use the burning houses as big flares for the paratrooper invasion. Docks captured more or less intacts and Germany sends in regular ferrys with tanks and supplies plus more men…
What’s the purpose to this? Are you invading? Forget it – you’ll lose. Are you conducting a raid? That is, come in, take a field, raid something near the field, bugger off back to France? Sounds like a good way to lose some JU-52’s, but at least it would be feasible.
 
If the Germans had 2000 operational U-Boats they wouldn't need to invade…

Well, if the Germans had magic ponies from Pixieland then they could just ride across the Channel. But they didn’t have magic ponies. What they did have a war that had to be ended somehow, or it could escalate in a nasty fashion. I think three fairly simple operational principles are -
(1) If the German army is poised to invade Britain, then significant numbers of the RN’s destroyers and aircraft are on perpetual alert waiting to go into the Channel.
(2) If a destroyer force is poised for Channel invasion duty, then it also cannot be engaged in ASW in the Atlantic.
(3) If ‘Sea Lion’ goes in then it could be a debacle that permanently ends the threat of invasion, terminating the benefits described above.

From those, that Sea Lion’s apparent greatest operational use was as a fleet in being to divert British resources from other fronts. That’s not quite as stupid a proposition as a look at the raw data would imply. But as an actual operation meant to be executed? Tough to see how the British aren't heavily, heavily favoured.

Given that the RN can bring destroyers to the party, it's doubtful that would do any better, especially as Fighter command would offer the bombers cover, and might well be doing a bit of bombing themselves on the side.

Guadalcanal, Crete, Dunkirk - these all established that an air force cannot prevent a navy from operating provided said navy was willing to pay with long lists of warships on the ‘repair’ roll, and others sunk. Tunisia, Sicily and the South Pacific established that ‘rat transportation’ methods are quite difficult to eliminate by air or sea attack, but that they are not sufficient to allow an army relying on them to secure operational dominance.
 

What’s the purpose to this? Are you invading? Forget it – you’ll lose. Are you conducting a raid? That is, come in, take a field, raid something near the field, bugger off back to France? Sounds like a good way to lose some JU-52’s, but at least it would be feasible.

That's all I was trying to do, make a demonstration that resistance was futile. Although the troops were to stay and attempts were to be made to reinforce them as much as possible. Even then expanding the bridgehead was pretty futile. And as I said I got shot down pretty good, when this fails it boosts UK morale and lowers German. Maybe to the point the Generals have a little private talk with the Corporal...;)
 
That's all I was trying to do, make a demonstration that resistance was futile. Although the troops were to stay and attempts were to be made to reinforce them as much as possible. Even then expanding the bridgehead was pretty futile


Crete shows you what the German airborne arm’s maximum strength attack was. They were able – just barely able – to take an island with a corps-strength defense far from friendly British support bases and under German air dominance. And they still only won there because the local commander didn’t react very well with his forces. In southern England the local division is going to receive large reinforcements by road or rail.

Resistance is futile is more a Borg thing, and the British aren’t exactly Europe’s #1 go-to guys for throwing in the towel. In fact, they’re sort of known for the opposite; never giving up. Keep calm and carry on. An airborne raid of Britain – that might be feasible, but by definition that type of pinprick operation really doesn’t accomplish much at the strategic level.

And as I said I got shot down pretty good, when this fails it boosts UK morale and lowers German. Maybe to the point the Generals have a little private talk with the Corporal..


Well, the generals didn’t ‘talk’ to the corporal after he got millions of Germans killed in Russia in the stupidest invasion since 1812, so why would they decide that losing a few thousand POW’s in Britain was a big deal?
 
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