Semi-Sorta Inverse SeaLion Question

Unterkopf

Banned
Alright, first things first.

Yes, this is an Operation Sealion thread.
Yes, I know this has been done to death.
Yes, I've seen the sticky.

I understand that nothing the Germans could've done would've managed to make Sealion a success.

BUT.

Rather than trying to wank the hell out of the Kriegsmarine, I wonder what could screw the Royal Navy up so that Sealion would succeed, not out of the ingenuity of the Kriegsmarine, but out of shitfaced stupidity of the Royal Navy.

I understand that a POD large enough to screw Britain to hell would have to take place sometime during the interwar period.

So, yeah, theres the question: At any point after the 1918 armistace and before, lets say, January 1 of 1942, what could be done to screw up the United Kingdom so bad that a German* invasion, with minimal assistance outside of Italy or (hypothetical collaborating) France could be at least successful enough to seize England?

*I understand that a POD that far back would no doubt either butterfly away the NSDAP or change the NSDAP beyond recognition. Fine, not a problem. As long as it's Fritz doing the swimming across the channel, its all good.
 
Having the Royal Navy mightily screw up at Dunkirk, and leave all the perfectly good transports stranded on the beach might help out with the lack of transports on the German part, but it's not nearly enough by itself.
 
Any POD that screws a sea based empire badly enough to overturn centuries of naval dominance is likely also one that avoids WW2 altogether (Or turns it into a Franco-German war) by virtue of leaving Germany unchallenged enough to fulfil any goals of territorial expansion.

You need every possible way of screwing the British. A (unrealistic) war with the U.S is the only viable option outside of a communist revolution - but even that would not do the job on its own. The royal navy is still slightly larger than the USN, and Japan would certainly join in on such a war, dividing US attention.

First step would therefore be driving an even bigger wedge between the Japanese and the British to prevent them ever teaming up - ideally even triggering a war which would sap valuable resources. The Anglo-Japanese alliance was already on the way out by this time, and relations were frosty enough to make conflict over Chinese concessions viable.

The bigger challenge would be keeping that conflict going long enough to cause serious damage to the RN, and finding a way for this POD to create genuine tension between the U.S and U.K. Which is hard - there are a number of things the British can do to create ill-will (Imperialism, missteps in Ireland and China), but few that would drive that ill-will to the point of war, especially not given the U.S's isolationism. But, for the sake of the timeline, let us assume that during the Anglo-Japanese "conflict", there are a series of unfortunate "incidents" between the Royal Navy and U.S ships in the Pacific that ramp-up anti-british feeling. Accidental sinkings, seizing merchant ships bound to china, blockades, etc.

The ideal situation would be that, 1) By the end of the Anglo-Japanese war, the U.S public absolutely loathes the British, and 2) the war has been hard enough to effectively eliminate the Japanese as a serious Pacific rival to the U.S, but at the cost of massive RN casualties.

This would usher in the 30's with the British resuming their position as the main naval rival to the U.S they had during the 19th century - with frosty relations and a severely exhausted U.K economy to boot. After all, this would be a war on the back of WW1, which already had an enormous cost. This may well make it impossible for the UK to pay back its war debts to the US, further inflaming anti-British feeling.

If you have a similar combination of overcapacity, shortage of credit and protectionism as during the Depression OTL, it may well provide a trigger for relations going to the breaking point of an actual Anglo-American war.

Such a war would be unlikely to go anywhere near WW2 levels of intensity - no invasion of the British Isles or destruction of industry - but with the British already on the brink economically, it could well be the push needed to set off an empire-wide collapse, especially if you combine it with other resource-draining events such as a violent Indian Independence movement (which needs Ghandi's influence gone to happen.)

The U.S would have heavy interests in decolonization and removing a rival naval threat. Considering the troubles (domestic, foreign, colonial) that the UK will be facing, they may very well opt for a peace along those terms. The result would be a badly mauled UK that would stay out of pretty much anyone's affairs while it recovers.

As said earlier, that leaves Germany unchallenged. In such a timeline, the prospect of a high seas fleet that can successfully challenge any contenders becomes much more viable, and the Germans are therefore less likely to opt for U-boat "asymmetric" warfare. Follow that up with France being virtually alone and defeated in short order, and the road will be completely open for Germany to cross the channel, should they wish to.
 
If we're talking British screw-ups I can see several possible ones that might give the Germans an edge (one comment so this doesn't get indigestible huge):

The advocates of a huge British bomber force are even more successful than they were historically in the lead-up to war. Historically they advocated a huge fleet of four-engine bombers as a deterrent to war--essentially saying that (a) the bomber would always get through (a common assumption of the time, and probably for the most part true in an era of no radar and biplane fighters) and (b) they were capable of delivering a 'knock out blow', devastating an opposing nation's industry and morale (also a common assumption of the time) and (c) therefore a huge fleet of big bombers was Britain's best way of projecting power and deterring the Germans. This was a position with serious political support from a large part of the British establishment.

Had the huge bomber fleet that they advocated been built in the years leading up to the war, (a) It would have pushed fighter production down due to the competition for funding and scarce skilled labor. The philosophy of the bomber as the primary weapon would have probably meant less funds for the radar system and the filtering and operational centers to make it useful (b) It would have probably forced the Chamberlain government to delay their introduction of conscription and their efforts to build the army above the level where they could put maybe two divisions on the continent. Even if they later started expanding the army, it would have been too late to have much impact by the summer of 1940. Figure two years to train troops and turn them into functioning divisions. The Soviets did it faster, but with guys who had been in the army as conscripts previously, so if the Brits hit the accelerator on expanding the army in the summer of 1939, they wouldn't see much of the impact until summer of 1941, a year too late to help with Sea Lion. (c) It would have drained the Brits of foreign currency, which would have been very bad. Politically Roosevelt would probably not be able to risk Lend Lease before the presidential election of November 1940, so the Brits were pretty much on their own financially until then. (d) It would have cut naval building to some extent, though not enough to tilt the naval balance in terms of capital ships. The Brits would have less in the pipeline though, and less expansion of their shipyards, which means that wartime naval expansion would start from a smaller base of facilities and skilled workers.

So it's June 1940. France has fallen on schedule. A much-shrunken BEF has evacuated what was left of the two to four divisions that it put on the continent. The British army can eventually expand to a significant force if they can make it through until the summer of 1941, but is vulnerable until then. The Royal Airforce has maybe half the fighters it did historically, and less factory space to build more. They have fewer fighter pilots, though a lot more bomber crew. Maybe they've committed more of the existing fighters to the Battle of France because they don't value home defense as much--on the philosophy that the bomber will always get through. They don't have enough hard currency to pay for all of the orders for US military equipment they have on order, and even conserving cash they will run out of hard currency well before November.

Now run the Battle of Britain, with an incomplete radar system that allows British planes (what there were of them) to be caught on the ground, with the British fighter planes a mix of Hurricanes and Gloster Gladiators, with fewer fighter planes and fighter pilots in the pipeline. The Brits can move their fighters out of range of the Luftwaffe, but in a world with minimal fighter opposition the Stukas can come out to play and they are far more accurate than level bombers, so they can take out relatively pinpoint targets, like aircraft and munitions factories and to some extent ships.

Also, figure in the attitudes of other powers. The US would far rather see the Brits hold out, but if they decide that Germany will take Britain they will pull back aid and use it to build US forces. And then there are the jackals. If it looks like Britain will inevitably lose, then there are a multitude of countries and forces that would have liked to pile on: Spain, Japan, Iran (would have loved to seize control of oil fields), Iraq (would have loved to kick the Brits out), Egypt (same), Indian and Burma Nationalists (same), maybe even Turkey (which would have liked to have Mosul back, and maybe Cyprus). The Soviet Union might even take a hand, going after Iran and maybe even threatening India. Most of the jackals weren't particularly serious military powers, but stack a bunch of them together at Britain's low ebb in summer 1940, and things could get interesting.

All of which was why the Chamberlain government went with a balanced approach historically. They weren't completely stupid.
 
Alright, first things first.

Yes, this is an Operation Sealion thread.
Yes, I know this has been done to death.
Yes, I've seen the sticky.

I understand that nothing the Germans could've done would've managed to make Sealion a success.

BUT.

Rather than trying to wank the hell out of the Kriegsmarine, I wonder what could screw the Royal Navy up so that Sealion would succeed, not out of the ingenuity of the Kriegsmarine, but out of shitfaced stupidity of the Royal Navy.

I understand that a POD large enough to screw Britain to hell would have to take place sometime during the interwar period.

So, yeah, theres the question: At any point after the 1918 armistace and before, lets say, January 1 of 1942, what could be done to screw up the United Kingdom so bad that a German* invasion, with minimal assistance outside of Italy or (hypothetical collaborating) France could be at least successful enough to seize England?

*I understand that a POD that far back would no doubt either butterfly away the NSDAP or change the NSDAP beyond recognition. Fine, not a problem. As long as it's Fritz doing the swimming across the channel, its all good.

You are brave
Hands down Dale coz and Leturn they made the so called unspeakable Sea Lion Possible
 

BlondieBC

Banned
First, you should look at Conrad of A-H GHQ in 1916 to see how dumb a person could be in a defense. He did about everything possible to make it easy for Brusilov but actually have a 100 mile section of front with not troops. He took hard to defend terrain which was easy for the Russians to logistically attack at, removed all the experienced units, organized the defense poorly, the committed the experience troops to attack over rough terrain with bad supplies. People will say it is ASB, but the British High commander performing at the 99 percentile of flag officer stupidity would make it possible.

For example, PM Churchill decides Narvik is the key to the war. Narvik is never evacuated, but is constantly reinforced. Most of the Royal Navy is assigned to interdict supply lines and supply air and artillery support to Narvik. There is a slow attrition of RN power to due to U-boats and the Luffewaffe. All the fighter reserves and army reserves are committed to Norway. When the Luffewaffe wears out the initial fighter group in England, there are no reserves. Only 3 ad hoc, light infantry divisions defend the entire South of England. The PM ignores intel of the impending Sealion attack, and does not move any reserves to help stop Sealion until 96 hours after the first German troops land. By this time, the Germans have capture several ports and airfields. There is mass panic in England and the lines are shatter. The Germans pause when supplies run low, but they have a beach head over 50 miles deep and 100 miles long. I know this sounds ridiculous, but replace Churchill with Conrad, Narvik with the Italian Alps, and South England with Eastern Poland, and you have the battle plan A-H in 1916. So yes, a really, really bad admiral or general can lose a country a war.

Or, simple scenario. The Admirals wait 3 days longer to begin the evacuation of Dunkirk and decided to bring the entire fleet to the Coast line to help. BB and Aircraft carriers are all within sight of land. The U-boats and planes have a field day shooting at capital ships, and there are enough losses to make Sealion possible. The Germans also lay large minefields on all exits from the Dunkirk area. To me, this sounds a lot like Churchill actual Gallipolli. After two BB were sunk by a single U-boat in one day at Gallipolli. And then there is Churchill "Live Bait Squadron" of WW1.

Or, the British are frustrated at France inaction while Poland is being attacked, and execute a poorly plan amphibious assault on Heligoland an the German North Sea Coast in September 1939. The invasion is a disaster like Ketch. The Germans don't react immediately, but once they realize it is a major operation respond with everything. The British Fleet is heavily damaged, and many land crafts and small boats surrender on the mainland. Unfortunately, the British actually take Heligoland, and a Divisions is trapped there and holds out for 45 days, during which multiple attempts are save the unit through Naval action.

For an WW2 example, look the defense of Singapore to show how poorly an army can do. I am going to now switch to small things that make Sealion much easier between 1918 to 1940 in the next post.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
1918 to 1940 Smaller things:

1) Not technically on your list, but German quality control fixes the torpedoes before the war. Britain is short many ships including several capital ships. Churchill and many senior admirals are also killed.

2) Britain stop repaying the WW1 loan in 1934. Have they continue repaying for whatever POD, and cancel all new ship building, plane building, and new weapon development from 1934 to September 1938.

3) On the 1925 naval treaty limits, just set the limits lower, especially on CL and DD. Germany has a lower limit to catch up with.

4) Especially combined with #3 or #5, simply ignore the German Naval buildup until after Poland was invaded. Hitler was sure England would not fight over Poland, so why not have the PM sure Hitler would never invade Poland and assume there is no need to prepare. Also, no Anglo-German Naval treaty, so Germany can build what it likes.

5) Britain had mutinies in the Navy in the early 1920's over paycut. At one point they cabinet was concerned the seamen would scuttle several capital ships. POD #1: They do scuttle ships so Britain is out of 2 or 3 QE type BB and smaller ships, the Navy Admiral ranks are purged, and the ships are not replace. Or POD #2, much more likely, the Mutiny was about a paycut of about 1/3. During WW1, pay went up by 2 to 1, but cost of living went up 3 to 1. Have the Admiralty totally cave and say double the pay of the sailors. This will drive up operation costs substantially, and if the overall budget is not raised, reduced the numbers of ships. Fewer ships in the late 20's and early 30's mean a lot fewer experienced sailors come the war.

6) In OTL, Britain assumed no wars for 10 years in the interwar budgets. Have a cost cutter make it 15 years, so Britain just stops developing new weapons. Britain enters 1938 with 1918 military technology across the board.

7) Any POD that sours USA/Britain relations. Because of first POD, Britain has bulk of fleet in Orient to counter Japan assuming France will not fall. Britain also assumes it only needs parity with Germany Naval, so has a very small fleet in British waters.

8) Fighter commands moves all fighters to France in the phony war period. Unfortunately, they don't stop the Luftwaffe, and in the evacuation of France, most of the planes are lost/left behind. Germany can skip the air war part, and go straight for the invasion.

9) No radar development.

10) No evacuation of Polish troops from Poland. The engima machine is not brought over and the British are not reading the codes. #9 with #10 mean Germany achieves surprise when they land.

There are lots of little things that could add up. For a plausible one, I like the following:

Pay raise for sailors. (#5) To me, this type of action would be very typical of how Britain handle strikes. After all, the sailors are really just asking for cost of living adjustment to get them back to 1910 levels. This leads to the budget department changing the no war in 10 years to no war in 15 years (#6). From lower budgets flows no radar (#9) and then (#4) where Hitler is ignored for a few more months because no one wants to deal with a largely unsolvable problem. Britain still declares war but with no radar, no modern fighters, and no ships built since 1925, it is too late.
 
I was on SHWI when Alison posted this: http://www.changingthetimes.net/samples/brooks/why_sealion_is_not_an_option.htm

In particular

We can choose to wave a magic wand, and wipe out the RN and the RAF, and examine how successful the invasion was likely to be in their absence. Sandhurst has done this on four occasions to my knowledge. Both sides were given the historical starting positions, with an invasion date of 24 September.

In each case, the details of the fighting varied, but by each analysis resulted in 27 September dawning with the Wehrmacht holding two isolated beachheads, one at roughly 2 divisions strength on Romney March, and one of 1 division at Pevensey. Each were opposed by more numerous forces, with growing numbers of tanks and artillery. German resupply was still across open beaches.

Operation Sealion can only be described as a blueprint for a German disaster.

yours,
Sam R.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
No ships built since 1925? This is going to be fun...

Britain still owes the USA about 2.5 billion USD, which at the time was 2.5 years of USA federal budget, plus interest. So call it 3 billion after interest. Any plan to repay the debt would cause massive problems, either military budget cuts, domestic budget cuts or massive tax increases.

In the early 1920's, the British were trying to cut pay by 1/3 to sailors, which implies that they could not afford to man 1/3 of the ships they already had in service. Why build new ships when you can't afford to operate them. A plausible different budget decision would have been to mothball 1/3 of the existing ships, and then if ships wore out, bring them back out of mothballs. A huge number of new ships were built in the years leading up to the war, and ships have lifetimes measured in decades. A complete ship building freeze is a plausible solution that could have been chosen.

And yes, restarting the ship building after a 10+ year pause would be a real pain. Germany and A-H lost WW1, but so did Britain financially. In reality, only Japan and maybe Romania and Serbia can be honestly said to be victors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battleships_of_the_Royal_Navy

Britain did not lay down any battleships between 1922 and 1937. All I am really doing is scrapping two battleships (BB Nelson, Rodney) and delaying the King George Class by 18 months or so. So Britain is short 4 BB's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_Royal_Navy

For Carriers, i am just scrapping the 3 light carriers in the 20's, or more likely they are in mothballs. HMS Hermes, Eagle, Furious. And delaying the Illustrious class. Britain is short 3 CVL and 2 CV for the battle.

These are not radical departures, several of these ships took many years to complete, so if the manpower budget is raised by 100% over OTL to avoid mutiny, then to make up for it, the partially completed ships would be a logical place to find the cash. Or if Britain was looking to find funds to repay the debt.

In 1925, I see the discussion something like.

PM - We have to cut your funding by another 10%. I see you have two BB that are partially built and that work has stopped on these ships. We are going to need to cancel them and sell them for scrap. I don't want to hear objections, you will just have to do with 10, not 12 battleships. These are tough times, and we all have to make sacrifices. This will also save 3,000 naval personnel.

Adm. - This is madness.

PM - This is what has to be done, shall i find a new admiral to run the fleet who can make do with what the nation can afford, not what the admiral wants.

Adm. - No, I will make it work.

PM - The numbers dictated it. Since we need to cut the number of sailors by 1/3, this means we should be going from the planned 12 to 8 BB. By scraping these ships, cutting training budgets, heavy cuts to the RAF fighter wing, and R & D cuts, i have found enough money to run the two extra battleships. And after all, it would take Germany or Russia at least 15 years to build a good Navy from scratch, and 15 years is more than enough time to plan a new ship, build them, and train up a new crew. The shipyards have assured me they can design a ship, restart the ship yard and build a ship in 7 years. This leaves you a full 8 years to get the new ships crew up to speed. In reality, we could cut the entire process to 10 years, which is much shorter than it would take Germany to rearm in worst case scenario.

The thread writer ask what could happen if Britain got hit by the stupid bat, and i gave him some examples.

And yes, an even deeper cut to the military budgets in the 1925 to 1938 time period makes life real sporting for the British.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
We can choose to wave a magic wand, and wipe out the RN and the RAF, and examine how successful the invasion was likely to be in their absence. Sandhurst has done this on four occasions to my knowledge. Both sides were given the historical starting positions, with an invasion date of 24 September.

In each case, the details of the fighting varied, but by each analysis resulted in 27 September dawning with the Wehrmacht holding two isolated beachheads, one at roughly 2 divisions strength on Romney March, and one of 1 division at Pevensey. Each were opposed by more numerous forces, with growing numbers of tanks and artillery. German resupply was still across open beaches.

Operation Sealion can only be described as a blueprint for a German disaster.
I was on SHWI when Alison posted this: http://www.changingthetimes.net/samples/brooks/why_sealion_is_not_an_option.htm

In particular



yours,
Sam R.

Consider the source of the quote, this could easily be Propaganda by the British. I can dig up a quote where Nimitz said roughly a "loss at Midway delays the end of the war by 18 months". Admiral and Generals often say things that are not true for political reasons. I bet between Don Rumsfield, Robert McNamara, and General Westmoreland, I could fill a few books with misleading statements by military men. If you can find a quote by say the Chinese or Soviet War Colleges, I would find that much more powerful.

To me, this statement is absurd on its face. Ok, RN scuttle, all planes crashed into open. First, the Germans don't notice that there is not a single RAF plane in the sky? Without aerial recon, the army is blind. The German bombers are slaughtering the artillery and interdicting the supply lines. Why is the Luftwaffe now unable to hit bridges? How is London not in panic as heavy bombers bomb London as often as the weather permits. The Germans will bring in the Bismark and other naval artillery and pound the British Units until they run out of ammo. German destroyers are running up and down the coast shooting everything in site. Within a week, the Germans have setup a nearly 100% effective blockade of the British Isles with destroyers and U-boats openly sailing in the Irish Sea. Within 10 weeks, death from starvation begin to happen in England. Most Britons will not live to see spring.

Ok, next quote from your site.

Meanwhile, the Kriegsmarine were displaying a similar level of understanding of the needs of the Wehrmacht. It stated that the time between first landing and the second wave of reinforcements and supplies would be 8-10 days. Thus 9 Wehrmacht divisions, without any heavy equipment or resupply, would be expected to hold out against the 28 divisions in Britain, which had unlimited access to supplies and the available equipment.

Many of these units were not even up to their TOE, much less "unlimited access to supplies". If you do a war game where one side has unlimited supplies, it is not a war game, it is a child's game. And yes, i do think 9 divisions can hold out on the defensive against 28 divisions with unlimited air support.

Less adequately considered by the Kriegsmarine was how to capture an intact port. The chosen port was Dover. The operational plan was to sail the barges in and capture it. This was the detailed plan. The defences of Dover included a considerable amount of equipment "Surplus to establishment" (courtesy of HMS Sabre, which had passed on abandoned equipment from Dunkirk). This equipment included:

3 Boys anti-tank rifles

19 Bren guns

4 mortars

3 21" torpedo tubes

8 6" guns

2 12 pounder guns

2 14" guns, called Winnie and Pooh.

There were two limiting factors. Firstly, lack of ammunition (the anti-tank rifles had only 19 rounds each) and lack of personnel. (The CO complained to his diary that he didn't have enough troops to use all the weapons he had, and he couldn't request more troops because he shouldn't have all this equipment in the first place.)

Ok, remember no RN, no RAF. Also remember how a few sentence ago ,the British had "unlimited supplies". The 14' guns will be an issue IF the have trained crews, lots of ammo, and bomb protection. So i got a picture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Winnie_14_inch_gun_St_Margaret_March_1941_IWM_H_7918.jpg

The stuka's take this out easily. Ok, to the guns, he says he does not have enough troops to use the equipment. I personally would have troops use the heavy weapons before i went to rifles, so based on this list, he has less than a battalion of men, poorly trained, with limited ammo. Was the 19 rounds per tank gun listed because it was his highest or lowest amount of ammo. At a combat rate of fire, the 19 rounds for a 6" is gone in less than 30 minutes of combat. Based on the information provided, dover falls on the first day, maybe the first morning.

Now this all changes with a RN and RAF, but to think that a few hundred Luftwaffe plans can't silence this list of equipment in a few hours seems absurd. Then to assume that a battalion of poorly trained men with rifles and limited ammo stop a regiment seems to be a real stretch. To say they stop a division does not make sense to me. Once the port of Dover is secured, supplies will flow in, and Germany will win on numbers alone. To repeatedly attack a more experience foe where he has total air supremacy does not make sense. Basically, all that is in dove is one battery of 155 artillery and tow 14 inch guns. This is what is going to have to stop the German barges.
 
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