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I've read a ton of the discussion here about Unternehmen Seelöwe, i.e. Operation Sealion, the proposed German invasion of Britain in WWII. The consensus is that it wasn't a realistic proposition: barges would have had a hard time making the crossing, no more than one wave could have been landed before the Royal Navy arrived, and there was the small matter of resupply. One thing I don't recall ever seeing discussed was the Germans first seizing the Isle of Wight, four miles from the middle of the southern British mainland, which featured civilian airfields.

There was a newspaper article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3806587/Adolf-Hitler-talked-plot-occupy-Isle-Wight.html) I saw today that was based on a book (https://www.amazon.com/We-March-Aga...07&sr=8-1&keywords="we+march+against+england"). It didn't happen because Jerry overestimated the number of British defenders.

The author, Dr. Robert Forczyk, wrote that the Germans could have had as many as 4,000 troops on the island within two days and recapturing it would not have been a priority for the Brits. If it failed, it could have been written off as a raid.

Field Marshall Alan Brooke, commander of the British Army in 1940, who would have been in charge of the defense against invasion, confided to his diary that Jerry could pull it off, and Dr. Forczyk believes he would have ignored it as a diversion.

This will be a pretty short thread if someone could just direct me to an existing thread. I saw someone say, “Oh, not the fucking Isle of Wight again“ in one place, but I saw no more detailed discussion than that. Otherwise, what do we think?
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