Sea Lion Delenda Est

Just reading a book about Sealion apparently germans trialled craft made from wine barrels .

Let me guess, they had the soldiers who were going to sail on those contraptions drink all of the wine first so they would be good and drunk before embarking?
 
I once thought about having the German's having the invasion fleet sail, then return in order to lure the RN into the Channel and sink as many as possible. I now realize what a crock this is, as the Luftwaffe isn't well-trained in sinking ships plus the fact the RAF can cover them. Aircraft losses on both sides will be heavy with few crews recovered. The RN may lose some ships but isn't going to be crippled enough to allow the invasion fleet to sail unmolested.

The whole tug/upowered barge problem was already brought up. This has disaster written all over it...

Then the problem of resupply. It is very doubtful the German's can capture a port, and if they do it will be sabotaged to the point of being next to useless until rebuilt. All ships sailing back and forth will be subject to attack and losses will be heavy. And unlike France the German's won't be picking up transport or supplies so EVERYTHING has to be brought over.

There are few suitable landing sites and those will be heavily defended. Even if the German's get a foothold breaking out won't be easy. Remember even the Allies had trouble breaking out of the Normandy beachhead, it took a lot of effort and air support to smash open the German lines and allow this. I don't see the Heer getting the same amount of help from the Luftwaffe. And the British were not as weak as is generally believed, the Heer is not going to have a walkthrough.

So all in all Seelowe just isn't going to work...
 
a paper submitted to Fuhrer conference 26 July estimated conversion of transports would need 30 000 tons of iron and steel , 40 000 cubic metres of lumber and 75000 cubic metres of concrete so Sea Lion preparations needed a lot of resources that might have been used elsewhere
 
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