Sea Lion in 1942 or 1943 after fall of Russia

The problem was reinforcing and supplying the that first wave, because the Germans absolutely could not keep the Channel clear, nor could they keep the RAF purely defensive. The losses just to create the opportunity would be ruinous, and heavy enough to prevent a second opening from being brought about.

This says it all, you can't keep any German forces in the UK supplied. Even if they manage to break out (which is unlikely) they won't get far...
 
, 30-45 are need for the UK.

Start of 1942 in the UK I estimate the following UK/Allied Divisions:
10 Armoured
2 Airborne/Marine
18 Infantry front-line
9 Infantry lower establishment

plus whatever the US can ship, and potential returnees from the Med.
 
My brain froze at "6 airborne divisions"...

The full industrial might of the allies in OTL supplied enough planes for 3 in D-Day...
 
The concept of strategic bombing was lauded in RAF but proved to be rather shaky in reality. up until 1943 RAF was probably lucky to hit the right country, let alone any strategic target. There was a reason to go to night bombing after all.

http://ww2today.com/17th-october-1942-bomber-commands-operation-robinson-hits-le-creusot-works

The Schneider armament works at Le Creusot were attacked by 94 Lancasters in daylight. The force flew below 1,000 feet during the whole of the outward flight, which included 330 miles over Occupied Territory. The total flight was over 1,700 miles.

The main attack was made on the factory from a height of 4,000 feet; a small formation of six aircraft attacked the transformer and switching station from 500 feet. Only one aircraft failed to return.
 
Years? Far, far longer than that, I think.

A navy is not just a bunch of metal ships with guns. It is thousands of officers and crewmen who have experience at sea, who have been rigorously trained, who have mastered the complicated procedures of running a ship to the point that they can do them in their sleep, traditions centuries old that build up a sense of shared purpose and mission. The Royal Navy had that for about a quarter of a millennium. But it took literally generations to create and intense effort to maintain over the years.

If the Germans build these ships, where are they going to be allowed to cruise except in the confined spaces of the Baltic Sea? How are they going to gain experience? How are they going to weed out the excellent officers from the purely mediocre ones? The British are not going to allow them to do it, because they will do their best to sink any German ship that comes within the range of their guns and torpedoes.

The same problem that prevented the French from building up a navy to face the British during the Napoleonic Wars is going to plague the Germans during the Second World War, no matter what alternate history scenarios one dreams up.
Lessons from history for a would-be naval seapower:

1.) Don't bottle up half your destroyer fleet within a single fjord in enemy territory.

2.) Whenever possible, refuel your ships.

3.) Don't waste your most expensive assets on risky missions against the enemy's cheapest assets.

And so on.
 
Yes, Sealion is not viable, even later in the war with the Soviets knocked out early. The US and UK have a huge head-start in naval strength, and they've got plenty of industry to match whatever fleet Germany could build with plenty left over for the strategic bombing campaign and for building up defensive land forces and fortifications in Britain.

Germany's best strategy in this scenario would probably be some combination of fighting defensively on land and in the air and committing more resources to building and operating submarines against the convoys in the North Atlantic.

Actually the German manpower situation is probably worse. The Allies are getting a big edge on the U-boats which will build fairly quickly. The Russians would not have gone down easy so lots of dead highly experienced Heer soldiers unavailable for other duties plus there will no doubt be malcontents running around shooting, bombing and stabbing any German they can get their hands on, so lots of Germans on "anti-bandit" patrols for a long, long time all at the end of long and vulnerable supply lines.

Then there is the fact the Allies will be building up a truly epic bombing force in the UK and North Africa which will still bomb the crap out of German cities until they eventually open up the cans of instant sunshine and turn lots of those cities into gently glowing car parks.

The only way to really fuck the allies is if the Yellowstone Caldera let rip and wrecked the US economy, but to be honest the ecological damage be so massive it would mean everyone would have other more pressing issues on their minds.
 
Neither one of those statements are remotely realistic. Tabun and Sarin won't allow German transports to get to the beaches past the Allied navies nor will they clear the skies of Allied aircraft. And Hitler had no compunctions on using chemical agents in the death camps where the prisoners couldn't retaliate. He didn't give permission to use the nerve agents because he was afraid of the consequences since the Western Allies would surely counter with their own chemical agents. The 'Hitler had poison gas PTSD' myth needs to die.

The Russians were considered world leaders in pesticides and organo-phospates in the 1930's and had published a lot of cutting edge papers on the subject so the Germans believed this meant that they must have nerve gasses to as this was an "obvious" result of any research on the subject.
 
The thing about counterinsurgency is it's easy and doesn't require a lot of resources. As we can see from Malaya, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan...

Also there was a low level insurgency running in the Ukraine and Georgia until the early 1950's. The Soviets issued a general amnesty and even Stalin stuck to it, they were too scared the partisans would go bush again.
 
Top