Re-taking of Nazi occupied Britain?

Something I was pondering, please suspend your disbelief in the alian space babes for a short while.

But if Nazis managed to capture fully the island of britiain where would be a good location for a British D-day? I mean I'm assuming USA would be involved as well as the commonwealth nations.
 
Filling in the gaps in the plot of It Happened Here, at the end of the film its implied that allied troops have landed in the South West to link up with British partisans, with the final line of dialogue being "the route to Gloucester is free".

Depending on the Irish situation, the most sensible option would be landing in North Cornwall/Devon/Somerset, establishing a beachhead somewhere between Newquay and Minehead and then driving south over Dartmoor to capture Plymouth, enabling resupply, before launching a breakout to the East
 
Something I was pondering, please suspend your disbelief in the alian space babes for a short while.

But if Nazis managed to capture fully the island of britiain where would be a good location for a British D-day? I mean I'm assuming USA would be involved as well as the commonwealth nations.
How are the nazi coastal defence s ?
 
Assuming that Ireland is either occupied, too or "Finlandized", but the US occupies Iceland my suggestion would be to start with a bombing campaign targetting the coastal defences of either Ireland or the Northwestern coast of England/Scotland, depending of the status of Ireland.
Then land in Northern Norway instead.
 
I’m far from an expert on the amphibious operations of the Pacific War, but I imagine such an operation would be incredibly similar. Based out of Iceland, American forces could concentrate their forces from a safe distance and whittle away at Axis air and naval power (which must be considerable ITTL considering the mammalian operation was successful). From there, operations to secure the Faroe Islands and then Shetland would be undertaken. Scotland’s northwestern coast appears to be entirely unsuitable for any sort of large-scale naval landing and I’m having trouble finding any sufficiently large beaches. The coast around Aberdeen does seem so the trick - the cliffs and rocks level off and there are large beaches to the north of the city and on Aberdeen’s coast directly.

A race to secure the beachhead and prevent being driven into the sea would begin. Scotland is pretty defensible terrain so evicting Axis troops might be difficult. With that said, if they can cut south to Perth and Stirling then Axis garrisons north of this bottleneck can be starved out. Guerrilla guides can also aid Allies troops in evicting stubborn Nazi forces. After that, it’s all down to how much forces the Allies can bring to build up on their foothold. Additional landings in Northumbria could help to dislodge Axis defenses and initiate a lightning campaign that sees defenders in Glasgow and Edinburgh encircled. Until they get past Manchester and Leeds, I imagine it will be a campaign of starts and stops similar to the Italian campaign. The Germans will cobble together a defensive line based on advantageous northern terrain and the Allies will seek to pierce holes and outflank with naval superiority. Although the mountains running north to south through northern England isn’t exactly helpful to the defenders here.

Once the Allies force it far enough south, they’ll be in a good position to swat at Axis supplies from the continent while Axis ability to launch concerted strikes against shipping in the North Atlantic will recede with every successful Allied advance. Uboats remain a factor, but have nowhere near the dominance that air cover would have. After a certain point, Axis forces will be chronically under supplied and hungry and eventually they’ll crumble.
 
If Germany succeeded in occupying Britain, then all of Western Europe is under Axis control. I cannot imagine Spain remaining outside the Axis, and I would expect Portugal to join up for self-preservation. Ireland would probably fall into line in return for gaining the Six Counties. (Sweden and Switzerland would remain neutral and independent, and very cooperative.) Vichy France might even be permitted to join.

So how would "the Allies" come back? That is, the US, the remnants of the Commonwealth and Empire, and the majority of Latin America, including Brazil. We'll assume further that the US crushed Japan in the Pacific, but with the fall of Britain, India declared independence and neutrality, and that the Middle East is controlled by Axis powers or satellites. Also that the USSR was defeated enough that the Axis controls most of European Russia, with a Vichyoid rump state in eastern Russia and Asia. (Don't ask how this came about; ISTM it's a necessary precondition for the OP's question. Also don't ask about nuclear weapons.)

ISTM that the Allies, even with the whole Two-Ocean Navy available, can't successfully invade Europe from North America. The invading force must gain air supremacy in the area, and Axis land-based airpower would be too strong. Also sea control - very difficult near the enemy's bases and far from any of one's own.

I see two possible strategies, which might be carried out in parallel.

One would be "island-hopping" across the sub-Arctic North Atlantic. The massed USN would be strong enough to overwhelm Axis airpower in Iceland and secure the surrounding waters. With Iceland secure, the Allies could take the Faeroe Islands and then the Shetland Islands. From there, an invasion of Scotland is at least somewhat plausible. The Orkneys or Hebrides might come first.

The other strategy would be to invade Africa from Brazil. While Africa is part of the same landmass as Europe, it's very large and communications from Europe are tenuous except by sea - which Allied navies could shut down. The Axis simply lacks the deployable forces to defend the entire coast from Senegal to Angola. And the Allies could move a large force by sea to attack somewhere - say Liberia. IMO the Allies would have much greater ability to project force there by sea than the Axis across the Sahara.- So they occupy all of sub-Saharan West Africa. Then with West Africa as a base, the Allies drive north to Morocco and Algeria. From there, cross into Iberia, then France.

In this case, obviously, the Allies invade Britain from the south.

Two other strategies might be possible.

If there is no Axis garrison in Ireland, a surprise landing there might secure the island before the Axis could redeploy against it, providing a land base for Allied airpower. From there the Allies could invade Britain from the west.

Or... the Allies, victorious in the Pacific and East Asia, could mass forces in China (Manchuria and Xinjiang) and strike at the rump USSR. IMO it would be a weak state, and most of its people, troops, etc., would soon join the Allies. Then the Allies march west to Germany. Britain would be "retaken" after Germany fell (and the Axis surrendered).
 
Depending on the Irish situation, the most sensible option would be landing in North Cornwall/Devon/Somerset, establishing a beachhead somewhere between Newquay and Minehead and then driving south over Dartmoor to capture Plymouth, enabling resupply, before launching a breakout to the East

Trouble is with that you can easily run into a "Italian Campaign" situation as the attacking Allied troops get funneled into a narrow area (albeit with no mountainous terrain)
 
Or... the Allies, victorious in the Pacific and East Asia, could mass forces in China (Manchuria and Xinjiang) and strike at the rump USSR. IMO it would be a weak state, and most of its people, troops, etc., would soon join the Allies. Then the Allies march west to Germany. Britain would be "retaken" after Germany fell (and the Axis surrendered).
Honestly I’ve never seen this proposed and it’s kind of a novel idea.. I guess the only real issue with it is that consistent supplies would be even harder to get to their forces than trans-Atlantic supply lines would be. Things like foodstuffs and basic war materiel could be procured from places like China or the British Raj, but the more specific you get the less plausible it seems. A lot of work would need to be done to improve Siberian logistics networks and build up industrial bases in Japan and northern/western China. Without the Soviets definitively crushing Japanese resistance on the continent, the Japanese might be even tougher to crack IOTL. Which means more infrastructure to repair and reorient to the new operations across Eurasia. I imagine it will take quite a while before we could hope to see Allied troops pouring into the rump USSR in any size to make a real difference.
 
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The traditional answer is to land on the Isle of Thanet………..

More seriously, a landing on the west coast of France and drive to take Germany, leaving Britain alone as far as possible.
 
Trouble is with that you can easily run into a "Italian Campaign" situation as the attacking Allied troops get funneled into a narrow area (albeit with no mountainous terrain)
The lack of mountainous territory is the key point though

The alternative would be landing on the Gower, aiming to capture Cardiff and be re-supplied from there

The situation would be quite different from D-Day as the allies wouldn't be able to bring a mulberry harbour with them across the atlantic as they did across the channel, they'll have to take a major port within 3-4 days in order to be resupplied.
 
How are the nazi coastal defence s ?

German doctrine from 1941 to january 1944 was to defend the ports, leave only out posts on the interval beaches, and concentrate a large mobile force to defeat the unsullied enemy inland. It revolved around holding the ports, but not the rural beaches. ie: In October 1942 what we call UATAH Beach was defended by a companies worth of squad or platoon size outposts. Or Dieppe; the coast at & directly adjacent to the harbor was well defended. A few kilometers down the coast the defense was 'thin'. Given the huge amount of coast the defense will be spread.

Note: The strong beach defenses encountered in the June 1944 assault on Normandy were largely built in the change to Rommels forward defense strategy. It would not have been practical without the 60+ divisions available to OB West in 1944. As it was the coast south of Brittany and the Mediterranean littoral were still using the port defense strategy since the battalions or divisions needed did not exist.
 
Honestly I’ve never seen this proposed and it’s kind of a novel idea.. I guess the only real issue with it is that consistent supplies would be even harder to get to their forces than trans-Atlantic supply lines would be.

Dig deep enough into the US DROPSHOT plans of the 1950s & you can find that for attacking north from the Indian Ocean & Persian Gulf to seize the core of the USSR from the south. The same concept can be looked at for this scenario. Note how the transportation structure improvements, the Abadan port group, the improvement of the Persian & Iraqi railways that were done for Land Lease to the USSR have a secondary use. That is they would have the capacity to support a Allied army group on the north littoral of the Gulf region.
 
The situation would be quite different from D-Day as the allies wouldn't be able to bring a mulberry harbour with them across the atlantic as they did across the channel,

Wondering if that was possible?

Love to see any info' on if they could've done this. Was there any serious consideration for the US building any in the build up to D-Day?
 
The traditional answer is to land on the Isle of Thanet………..

More seriously, a landing on the west coast of France and drive to take Germany, leaving Britain alone as far as possible.

Invading Britain could be a diversion, or even a deception operation. Persuade Hitler to create a strong defense there at the expense of the French coast. A trans Atlantic invasion is a whole other level of difficulty, but if theres a relatively weak defense of Brittany...
 
Wondering if that was possible?

Love to see any info' on if they could've done this. Was there any serious consideration for the US building any in the build up to D-Day?

Mulberrys A & B were primarily built in the UK. The US contributed components. ie: Steel plank for temp pavement on the beach, communications equipment essential to run the port operations, the manpower for Mulberry A, the bulk of the LST, DUKW vehicles, a large portion of the ships sunk for breakwater barriers, ect... and many other items. There was a lot more to the Mulberries than Phenix cassions and floating docks.

Towing cassons across the Atlantic is not very practical, but: Cross beach discharge was well developed. Roughly from memory a 25 day discharge across UTAH Beach in July was 175,000 tons, OMAHA Beach with the docks wrecked and removed still had a intake of 250,000+ tones for the same period. Mulberry B at its full capacity was well over 350,000 tons for the same general time. That is over the beach supply was well developed. It worked as long as bad weather did not come directly in. Another illustration is Op DRAGOON. That was supplied over the beach & via the small ports of Cannes & Nice'. Marasailles & Toulon were not captured for over a week, and not operational for a couple more. Patches 7th Army was able to run off the Germans and advance to the entry of the Rhone valley with over the beach supply. Op HUSKY was heavily dependent on cross beach discharge of supplies as the Sicilian ports were inadequate for the dozen Allied divisions and air bases established, and they were not captured in 3-4 days.

Quiberon Bay: There was infact a third prefab Mulberry type harbor built and ready to use. This was for Operation CHASITY that was scheduled for July and canceled that month. The object was to instal a third prefab port in a inlet of Quiberon Bay on Brittianys south coast. Quiberon Bay is a high capacity anchorage that was never developed into a commercial port. Since it has excellent shelter from storms Phenix & Gooseberry type breawaters were not needed. What was at hand were floating docks, material for hard beaching ramps for LST, automotive roads & high capacity railway spurs, cranes, a power plant, some dry storage, & the operations unit. The target capacity was 8,000 tons daily IIRC. Since the expected capacities of both Mulberries, and the beach discharge were exceeded in Normandy its probable that would have occurred with Op CHASITY. When the Port of Cherbourg was restored in July its nominal peace time capacity of 8,000 to 10,000 tons daily was doubled, with a surge to 21,000+ tons daily in early September. The failure to break out of Normandy in June put Op CHASITY far behind schedule. it was canceled and its components redistributed to rebuild/expand Cherbourg and other ports along the Channel coast.

A trans Atlantic invasion would probably bring along something similar to the CHASITY project.

Ruppenthals 'Logistics in OVERLORD' covers a lot of this. There is also a logistics history of 21 Army Group that has a lot of useful background on Allied supply across the littoral.
 
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