Sturmabteilung Koch attacks Chain Home

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
  • Start date

Deleted member 1487

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung_Koch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home

What if the Luftwaffe, having realized the role of British radar, decides to attack the British radar stations with their special operations forces that took on Eben Emael and the Dutch bridges? They could deploy by E-boat, as the radar stations were not far from the shore.

These forces proved themselves capable of taking on dangerous missions and succeeding with acceptable losses, so why not the British radar on the South Coast of England?

As far as I can tell, the radar stations were not well defended at all, because they didn't want to draw attacks from the air, though they did have some defenses, mainly home guard with Lewis guns pointed in only one direction.

I've seen Luftwaffe reconnaissance photos of the radar stations, which were known in 1939, so the information about their layout and ground defenses was known.

So what would be the effect of a Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger special operations team deployed by E-boat attacking the British radar stations with demolitions and killing/capturing their operating crews for intelligence?

Obviously not all of the many stations would be successfully hit, but even taking out 1/3rd would have major effects on the Battle of Britain and subsequent operations. As ground forces could demolish the stations much more effectively than bombers, the towers' construction made them only susceptible to a direct hit from the air, preventing them from being rebuilt for several weeks and subsequent air raids could effectively prevent them from being rebuilt at all, why not run the risk of sending in special forces to do the job?

In the opinion of the community what are the chances of success of such an operation and what would be the effect of a successful, even if success is partial?
 
Hm, yes, let's go get trapped on enemy shores without the possibility of reinforcements in the hopes that we can temporarily blind the enemy. It'd do only a limited amount of good for the Germans, and cost them a lot.
 

Deleted member 1487

Hm, yes, let's go get trapped on enemy shores without the possibility of reinforcements in the hopes that we can temporarily blind the enemy. It'd do only a limited amount of good for the Germans, and cost them a lot.

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

The Brits parachuted into France and exited by sea in a mission nearly exactly like the one I'm suggesting. It could be done, because it was done.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Perhaps you should read the remarks given by Major-General Robert Laycock in 1947 regarding a German raid on a chain home low radar station on the Isle of Wight, in 1941. There is a tremendous lack of confirmation. It was either a lie or a secret, your choice.
 

Deleted member 1487

Perhaps you should read the remarks given by Major-General Robert Laycock in 1947 regarding a German raid on a chain home low radar station on the Isle of Wight, in 1941. There is a tremendous lack of confirmation. It was either a lie or a secret, your choice.

I was literally looking this up mere seconds ago. It was a myth as far as we know. It seems that the 'raid' was confused with a British training raid to prepare for Operation Biting run at the Ventnor station.
 
Why not bomb them at low level instead of sabotage them with ground teams? A better use for ground teams might be obfuscation and misdirection prior to an invasion. Drop in a few folks in firefighting uniforms or Air Raid Marshal outfits during a bombing raid and let them blend in later on.
 
Why not bomb them at low level instead of sabotage them with ground teams? A better use for ground teams might be obfuscation and misdirection prior to an invasion. Drop in a few folks in firefighting uniforms or Air Raid Marshal outfits during a bombing raid and let them blend in later on.

Yes and the attempts of those actually landed to blend in was so successful.....
 

Deleted member 1487

Why not bomb them at low level instead of sabotage them with ground teams? A better use for ground teams might be obfuscation and misdirection prior to an invasion. Drop in a few folks in firefighting uniforms or Air Raid Marshal outfits during a bombing raid and let them blend in later on.

It was tried and mostly failed. The stations were defended by AA units and it made bombing too costly because only a direct hit was able to actually damage/destroy the towers and dive bombers were very vulnerable to fighters and AA in their dives. Bf110 were better able to make bombing runs, but OTL they were used as fighter-bombers until later on after the BoB was over. AFAIK a tower was never destroyed, even when OTL the Ventnor station was knocked offline for several days. Still the British have weaker mobile stations they could put up while repairing the facilities. These are easier to bomb and are more vulnerable assuming the Germans can figure out where they are in use.

Also the Germans had abysmal spying in Britain, mainly because the head of their intelligence services was passing information to the British, including about his spies that he was inserting into Britain.
 
It was tried and mostly failed. The stations were defended by AA units and it made bombing too costly because only a direct hit was able to actually damage/destroy the towers and dive bombers were very vulnerable to fighters and AA in their dives. Bf110 were better able to make bombing runs, but OTL they were used as fighter-bombers until later on after the BoB was over. AFAIK a tower was never destroyed, even when OTL the Ventnor station was knocked offline for several days. Still the British have weaker mobile stations they could put up while repairing the facilities. These are easier to bomb and are more vulnerable assuming the Germans can figure out where they are in use.

Also the Germans had abysmal spying in Britain, mainly because the head of their intelligence services was passing information to the British, including about his spies that he was inserting into Britain.

If memory serves Canaris's widow was drawing a CIA pension after the war...

And yes the Abwehr efforts in the UK were abyssmal, but then not going for the Home Chain has its own effects.
 
It was tried and mostly failed. The stations were defended by AA units and it made bombing too costly because only a direct hit was able to actually damage/destroy the towers and dive bombers were very vulnerable to fighters and AA in their dives. Bf110 were better able to make bombing runs, but OTL they were used as fighter-bombers until later on after the BoB was over.

The attack on 4 radar stations on Aug 12 was made by Erprobungsgruppe 210 using Bf110s as fighter bombers.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Biting

The Brits parachuted into France and exited by sea in a mission nearly exactly like the one I'm suggesting. It could be done, because it was done.
That would be nice, but while it's a jiff across the Channel to Dover, the distance rises sharply either side, so I don't think you're going to get too much surprise, even coming in low (Chain home low covered the whole south and east coasts except more-or-less between Waymouth and Salcome, and, a small, hard to access bit of Northern Norfolk), which puts you on a strict time limit, and means that with the slightest muck-up you achieve nothing and get yourself captured.

And yes the Abwehr efforts in the UK were abyssmal, but then not going for the Home Chain has its own effects.
well the MI6 had their own plant in the Abwehr offices, so they picked up the agents quickly, and many of them hadn't exactly been nazis much to begin with (real nazi agents tended not to be able to blend in, so the Germans had to use less loyal agents right off the bat).
 

Deleted member 1487

That would be nice, but while it's a jiff across the Channel to Dover, the distance rises sharply either side, so I don't think you're going to get too much surprise, even coming in low (Chain home low covered the whole south and east coasts except more-or-less between Waymouth and Salcome, and, a small, hard to access bit of Northern Norfolk), which puts you on a strict time limit, and means that with the slightest muck-up you achieve nothing and get yourself captured.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home
the Chain Home Low system, or AMES Type 2 which could detect aircraft flying at minimum altitude level of 500 ft.[2]

http://histru.bournemouth.ac.uk/Ora...Technology/radar_research/chain_home_low.html
From 1941, it was now technologically possible to adopt a 10 cm format that had specific applications for the Army and the Navy because it made lower- looking, surface-based radars possible. These systems were known as CHEL (Chain, Home, Extra Low).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home_Low
http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/chl/chl.htm

http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/chel/chel.htm
In the early stages of the Second World War a German pilot could approach to within 80 miles of the British coast at 10,000 before CH detected him and by descending to 5,000 feet he could avoid CH detection to within 50 miles of the coast. With the introduction of CHL an aircraft flying at 500 feet up to 25 miles away could be tracked with very good accuracy. By 1941 the Germans had discovered that they could evade detection by CH and CHL by flying below 100 feet and skilled German pilots used this deficiency to devastating effect during raids on coastal targets.

By that time it was known that ultra-high radio frequencies could be formed into very narrow beams that could skim the earth's surface without being distorted by it. Research by Randall and Boot at Birmingham University had, by early 1940, led to the development of the Boot Strap Cavity Magnetron, a device that could produce microwave frequency waves with a power level some ten times greater than previous microwave devices. By early 1942 an experimental radar using this magnetron was successfully tracking aircraft flying at 50-200 feet to about 30 miles and on occasions out to 45 miles. On the basis of these experiments the Air Ministry decided to procure a number of these sets to form a further Home Chain to be known as Chain Home Extra Low. The original equipments were Admiralty Type 271's and Army coastal defence CD Mk IV to Mk VI, eleven of which were transferred to R.A.F. service by December 1942, a further three were brought into operation by May 1943. The Army CD Mk VI became Types 52 to 56 in R.A.F.service.

In 1940 the British couldn't detect shipping with Chain Home Low and had to wait for December 1942 for Chain Home Extra Low.

Bringing in men with E-boat was my original solution. Of course you could always mix Ju52s in with a night bomber force and drop commandos in, by the E-boats works better.

Also it would make sense to perhaps include the naval Marinestosskompanie for the Ventnor raid given their experience in island landing/naval assualts on the Chanel Islands.
 
I read somewhere that the towers themselves were not important as those could be replaced within hours.

The critical part was the controller rooms, typically located at the air field or in the vicinity of a main tower.

They were not underground all of them (only a few were I believe).

If those had been knocked out, the communications links (telephone lines, etc) woudl be down for days on end but the staff would be dead. It would take a little while to train new staff and could have been decisive.

Ivan
 
Bringing in men with E-boat was my original solution. Of course you could always mix Ju52s in with a night bomber force and drop commandos in, by the E-boats works better.
Right, now all you have to do is get past the guards, planet the explosives, and hope you haven't stupidly gone for a chain-home low station instead of a standard one. it would work in one or two cases, but asking for it to work in a dozen or more is stupid really, nothing could ever be pulled off that sweetly.
 
Top