a quick look at the chart says all harbours on isle of wight are useless for supply and seeing as you have no landing craft you get no heavy gear and resupply is labour intensive.as mentioned before supply by landing aircraft is not practical so you are left with air dropping.
Operation Sea Lion (1974 Sandhurst Wargame)
- Thread starter Not James Stockdale
- Start date
Problem is Glenn , from memory of my trips to the IoW, cannot actually think of a beach on the South Coast that does not have rocks in front and/or a cliff behind. So you having to find a spot is pretty important.
So? The first wave just needs to bring a really big trampoline to vault everyone up over the cliff.
Problem solved.
You are literally ignoring everything, different beaches take different times to get across in different conditions. You are also ignoring the point, you NEED to provide a logically based argument with historical backing, and not your ‘Barbarossa failed’ stuff, but stuff that shows US that YOU aren’t making a land based power run up AGAINST the MOST DOMINANT NAVAL POWER OF THE WORLD. You have not provided ACCURATE DATA, you have provided ,AT MOST, wishful thinking, that is you are applying a different situation to this one. I will happily admit you have a point IF YOU MAKE ONE WITH BACKING AND NOT JUST IGNORE THE INFORMATION THAT COUNTERMANDS YOUR POINTS.
Sorry for the caps but I need you to meet me halfway and entertain the POSSIBILITY that you are wrong or have malformed arguments.
In short, you meet us in the debate as either bringing forwards an argument based on the time’s logic and we can actually debate, not just have your arguments shot down by data you misinterpret (willingly, and I doubt you are willingly misinterpreting people’s arguments, you are smart) or take out of context (or, flat out ignore) from what is actually said.
Checked a map. It's as I remembered. The French there had an airfield a few thousand yards from overlooking hills. The Viet artillery was literally right on top of their airfield. Now, you check a map. The central part of Isle of Wight is over 20,000 yards from positions on the English shore. Heck, some points are 30,000 yards from the opposing shore. That's why they were talking about 15" battleship rounds fired from Portsmouth, and naval bombardments from warships offshore. Because they had already looked at the map and realised that airfields on IOW are basically outside the artillery range of the mainland otherwise. Zounds man, this was literally the first thing I checked during the preliminary feasibility phase.
I think there's a bit of a problem with your timetable.
They should invade Wight in early or half june before the fall of France, but you admit it needs at least 4 weeks of heavy bombardment to drive the RN out of Portsmouth (which is a bit optimistic IMO). This means they've got to start the bombardment of Portsmouth about 4 or 5 days into their campaign in France. While they haven't even reached the Channel with their forces and the victory in France is by no means certain!!! And the planes they use to bombard Portsmouth, can't be used in drive to Dunkirk. The paratroopes have just been decimated in The Hague. And the lost Ju-52s will not yet be replaced.
I think you've found a way to shorten the war. With your plan the germans probably won't even win the battle of France.
Ramontxo
Donor
I do agree with you in the Hitler offers a peace treaty being the best possible strategy for the Nazis. The problem with that being that this is summer 1940 less than two years after the "This (the Sudetes) is my last territorial ambition in Europe" and nobody (even less in Belgium the Netherlands Norway Poland Tcheckoslovakia or France) believe him anymore...
The garrison of Isle Of Wight rapidly loses the battle because it was far too small and not of high enough quality. The FJ takes the port on the north shore, and you remember all that talk about not being able to land heavy equipment without a port? Guess what, that applies to the British too! Put the entire 4th Infantry division on Isle of Wight in June 1940 with an armored regiment in reserves, then give me a call.
The idea the LW can't supply from the air? During these weather months, from the airbases available in France, with the whole Luftwaffe in France? Please. Under those conditions, on the best days, with an all-out effort, using air dropped canisters and as many bombers, they might even have hit 1,000 tons by air per day at peak.
No they can't do it from airbases in France, because you literally said that they should invade before the fall of France. So they won't have many operating airbases there (if any).
You really need to put your story together.
The timetable takes no action on the scenario before mid-June 1940. If by mid-July the RN has not been driven from the required ports, then the IOW operation would have to be suspended until they were. The key determinant to timeframe otherwise is the strength of the garrison on Isle of Wight. Crete had 40,000 troops on it. IOW didn't until - maybe - 1941. IOW is right under the nose of 11 Group, and the RN is still far closer than at Crete, even if having been driven from the local area. IOW can't have even a third the number of troops on it as did Crete, otherwise the defenses are getting too strong for the proposed airborne op.
What forces were present on the Isle of Wight to justify your assertions that the air landings would be defeated at the drop zones?
Deleted member 94680
No, you were referring to 30k troops being airdropped in and suddenly spoke of only 5k. I was querying the discrepancy.
Best I can find was references to FuMO 1 & 2 (Calais) as a land based surface detection radar and that had a range of appx 20 miles. If you have better information, I’d love to hear it, but it seems land based radar wouldn’t be much use for this plan.
Contingencies come after an event not before. The bombing of Portsmouth would need to occur before wightlion - hence describing it as a delay.
Very good questions. I get the impression the British were better prepared in the immediate term (wide issue of gas masks, plans to use chemical weapons, etc) but going forward I’m not sure. Did the Germans even have stocks of air-droppable gas?
hipper
Banned
its a pity you are planning to land in an island surrounded by 9.2 inch costal artillery I Count 6 guns in portsmouth and another 6 on The IOW itself. i'm not counting the 6” guns on the Sea Forts in the Solent or the 12” Railway guns, onshore.
a 9.2 inch gun has a range of 29,000 yards. the IOW is within artillery range
Zounds was good though pity you did not think that the RN might have defended their main base.
Wow, 160 pages - who would have thunk it?
I am enjoying this thread though, it's the most in-depth one I've seen as to why IOW won't work:
1) Unsuitable beaches
2) Very little area to land transports and gliders, or even drop paratroops
3) Too much opposition far too close
4) No reasonable way to reinforce whatever German forces get ashore
It got me wondering about what if someone tried to do a landing on Virginia beaches. Many are sand but you've got sand bars, rip tides and all sorts of man-made obstructions. Some are water-logged and would pose a hazard to vehicles and heavily-loaded troops. Unless you have excellent knowledge of what's there and tide conditions you could have real troubles, especially if your landing is contested and like the Germans are using a lot of unpowered barges being towed in by tugs.
I am enjoying this thread though, it's the most in-depth one I've seen as to why IOW won't work:
1) Unsuitable beaches
2) Very little area to land transports and gliders, or even drop paratroops
3) Too much opposition far too close
4) No reasonable way to reinforce whatever German forces get ashore
It got me wondering about what if someone tried to do a landing on Virginia beaches. Many are sand but you've got sand bars, rip tides and all sorts of man-made obstructions. Some are water-logged and would pose a hazard to vehicles and heavily-loaded troops. Unless you have excellent knowledge of what's there and tide conditions you could have real troubles, especially if your landing is contested and like the Germans are using a lot of unpowered barges being towed in by tugs.
hipper
Banned
Doy ypu think there was a Reason eagle day was in August?
the LW had to rebase its bombers in france before 5hey could mount heavy sustained raids.
tje IOW had a bigger Garrison in August however.
Wait you said summer of 1940 but that's of dubious merit since the "Battle of Britain" didn't start in any large degree until July 10th and Germany was using day bombing primarily until the end of September. If the RAF was bad at night fighting and the LW decent at it why launch a huge daytime attack on London on the 15th of September? Also why can Germany on the fly make major changes but the UK is stuck with their historical abilities? If the LW attacks Portsmouth dozens of times in a month then is it possible that the RAF would makes changes?