Successful Sealion

The problem being that even using Schwerer Gustav, no British city other than Dover or Folkstone is in range.

Which a successful Seelöwe kind of needs to be intact.

As per the original operation the logistics were always kind of iffy. It was unclear that there was enough sea lift to land the second wave in two lifts and this was before taking into account any causalities among the barges, tugs and ferries incurred in the two lifts required by the first wave...yes the first wave required two complete movements by all the transport vessels the Germans could squeeze into the invasion ports.

Once on the other side....well in 1944 with a lot more practice and a hell of a lot more naval resources the Allies found supply across the beaches to be inadequate. The Germans need ports as they are going to be facing considerably more air and naval attack. The British actually planned to demolish places like Dover and Folkestone if need be as defensive measure...so doing the job for them is kind of like cutting off you own nose.

Oh and hi Hendryk and welcome...don't be put off if your Sealion plans don't work, neither did those used the first time around and the people coming up with them were actually paid for their work.
 
Few posts ago I stated that by saying successful Sealion I mean landing in Britain and hold few southern cities. So it won't be conquering England but some sort of stalemate where both sides can not defeated other. For some time of course. And I know that after landing on British soil Royal Navy will be mad and will try to sunk all convoys in Channel. But this would be excellent practice for German naval bombers. Of course many of them will be destroyed by AA guns on British ships but then Germans will be forced to improve their tactics, weapons, engines and train better pilots. I think that jet engines could be introduced earlier by Germans in order to defeat Allied forces. I think that RN after some defeats will learn how to defeat wolfpack and after that Germans wil build better submarines (as OTL). Also I think that if Germans allocate all efforts to Britain during 1940-1942 instead of waging war against Yugoslavia and USSR (or even signing secret alliance with them) they could be able to enter Great Britain. With big losses but still.
 
Heavy gun would be not used against ships but against cities in southern England in order to destroy them (buildings, people, power plants, factories, airbases etc.).

According to one book I read this was part of their intended function; to keep the RN away from the invasion fleet.
 
I don't think Sealion is inherently ASB if the objectives are more limited and Germany takes a fundamentally different approach to the naval war.

Instead of building battleships and bad carriers, I think you would have to have a navy built upon commerce raiders and subs.

For naval aviation, have earlier and stronger ties to Imperial Japan, including sharing technology and experience as a land power shares tank designs and tactics with a naval power that is the Britain of Asia and was being built that way. In addition, if German aviation more intelligent (Goering has to more limited) you could have significant squadrons trained in the Japanese tactics.

Germaby doesn't need aircraft carriers when it has Normandy, Norway and Denmark bases for Naval aviation.

To me the real key is not an invasion that conquers the whole country but a beachhead significant enough to crush British morale right after the loss of Dunkirk forces. The reason is that the fog of war is significant and knowledge of what is and isn't possible is far too uncertain for the populace to know in 1040 or 1941.
 
Few posts ago I stated that by saying successful Sealion I mean landing in Britain and hold few southern cities. So it won't be conquering England but some sort of stalemate where both sides can not defeated other. For some time of course.

A stalemate won't be possible for long. Either the German resupply collapses via loss of shipping and the forces ashore run out of supplies, or the RN and RAF run out of assets with which to interdict the resupply and the Germans fix the ports and build up an overwhelming force. There's no real middle ground, not for more than a few weeks (arguably days). Whoever controls the Channel wins relatively quickly.
 
Few posts ago I stated that by saying successful Sealion I mean landing in Britain and hold few southern cities. So it won't be conquering England but some sort of stalemate where both sides can not defeated other. For some time of course. And I know that after landing on British soil Royal Navy will be mad and will try to sunk all convoys in Channel. But this would be excellent practice for German naval bombers. Of course many of them will be destroyed by AA guns on British ships but then Germans will be forced to improve their tactics, weapons, engines and train better pilots. I think that jet engines could be introduced earlier by Germans in order to defeat Allied forces. I think that RN after some defeats will learn how to defeat wolfpack and after that Germans wil build better submarines (as OTL). Also I think that if Germans allocate all efforts to Britain during 1940-1942 instead of waging war against Yugoslavia and USSR (or even signing secret alliance with them) they could be able to enter Great Britain. With big losses but still.

And that's where we get the actual wargame plan which the British did for Operation Sealion many years after the fact, with a WWII German officer commanding the other side. Germans suffered heavy losses to no real gain, and the British threw them back into the sea pretty fast. So why invade when you have a 100% chance of defeat for minimal advantage?

Compare Operation Downfall--it's the closest comparison to Operation Sealion, in that you are invading a country with both powerful army and powerful navy, in terrain the defender has been fortifying. Someone like Britain under Churchill, if forced to, will not surrender until the slightest bit favourable peace treaty has been arranged. And that's the hardest part, since if Britain is in serious danger of a land invasion, they will surrender before troops are on their soil. Anyone as intransigent as Churchill might be will be replaced with someone who is favourable for peace. And any British peace at that point will be favourable to the Germans, forcing the question "do we really need to attack them more to gain a better peace treaty?" The biggest thing, Hitler and the Nazis hated the Soviet Union, and any other war was only part of gaining Lebensraum and victory over the Soviets. If you focus that narrow hatred on the British, then you might have a nation dedicated enough for a serious attempt at Sea Lion (but probable failure, unless they delay the war a couple years).
 
Few posts ago I stated that by saying successful Sealion I mean landing in Britain and hold few southern cities. So it won't be conquering England but some sort of stalemate where both sides can not defeated other. For some time of course. And I know that after landing on British soil Royal Navy will be mad and will try to sunk all convoys in Channel. But this would be excellent practice for German naval bombers. Of course many of them will be destroyed by AA guns on British ships but then Germans will be forced to improve their tactics, weapons, engines and train better pilots. I think that jet engines could be introduced earlier by Germans in order to defeat Allied forces. I think that RN after some defeats will learn how to defeat wolfpack and after that Germans wil build better submarines (as OTL). Also I think that if Germans allocate all efforts to Britain during 1940-1942 instead of waging war against Yugoslavia and USSR (or even signing secret alliance with them) they could be able to enter Great Britain. With big losses but still.


The problem for Sealion is that the logistics are already on the point of failure without the Royal Navy.

Okay a probably not complete list of reasons why Sealion would have been a failure:

1) There are simply not enough transport vessels, even if there were the ports of Northern France are filled to capacity. This means the first wave assault troops will be waiting days (the Kriegsmarine estimate was 10 days) for their organic supply units to be delivered.
2) The nature of the vessels being used means that they will be crossing at night, against an enemy with radar. The British can find them, their own bombers cannot.
3) Back to the supply vessels, many though not all are river barges for inland use one good storm would literally capsize Operation Sealion.
4) The British Army has numerous prepared defences, is well dug in in the coastal ports and has numerous transport links to bring up reserves against any landing areas. The German bombers will struggle to stop the British Army concentrating and then it has ten days to destroy the assault forces...which note are without supply for this period.
5) The Royal Navy is huge, really really big and nor just does it only have battleships but lots of cruisers and destroyers too, on top of this it also has numerous small craft that can easily attack tugs and ferries even if they cannot take on warships. Oh and submarines, the Channel is not a great space for subs but the British ones can cruise around on the surface at night shooting up tugs and barges.
6) The English Channel is in range of 11 Group oddly enough, if the Luftwaffe let off suppressing 11 Group then its fighters can cover the Royal Navy against bombers by daylight. Worth noting Fighter Command do not have to even shoot down any bombers just so long as they jog enough yet not even all pilots that a sufficient force of the RN is able to operate in the Channel....not that the Luftwaffe had a great record against mobile warships or even at this stage against stationary ones.
7) Due to the chronic shortage of landing vessels the British do not at any point need to get them all. It will take at least 6 trips without casualties to get all the German land forces proposed for Sea Lion across the Channel and then more trips to resupply those forces in combat. If the number of operational vessels drops below the resupply threshold (a threshold which btw they never met to begin with) the invasion fails.

As for German improvements all of these were the work of years not months and that was an issue when Germany needed to ready to invade the USSR by 1942 or contemplate the utter failure not merely of Hitler's master plan but likely the War against the British as well...though they should be a good few years from formal defeat their lack of economic endurance meant that the Reich would not be winning...shades of WW1 all over again.
 
The problem for Sealion is that the logistics are already on the point of failure without the Royal Navy.

Okay a probably not complete list of reasons why Sealion would have been a failure:

1) There are simply not enough transport vessels, even if there were the ports of Northern France are filled to capacity. This means the first wave assault troops will be waiting days (the Kriegsmarine estimate was 10 days) for their organic supply units to be delivered.
2) The nature of the vessels being used means that they will be crossing at night, against an enemy with radar. The British can find them, their own bombers cannot.
3) Back to the supply vessels, many though not all are river barges for inland use one good storm would literally capsize Operation Sealion.
4) The British Army has numerous prepared defences, is well dug in in the coastal ports and has numerous transport links to bring up reserves against any landing areas. The German bombers will struggle to stop the British Army concentrating and then it has ten days to destroy the assault forces...which note are without supply for this period.
5) The Royal Navy is huge, really really big and nor just does it only have battleships but lots of cruisers and destroyers too, on top of this it also has numerous small craft that can easily attack tugs and ferries even if they cannot take on warships. Oh and submarines, the Channel is not a great space for subs but the British ones can cruise around on the surface at night shooting up tugs and barges.
6) The English Channel is in range of 11 Group oddly enough, if the Luftwaffe let off suppressing 11 Group then its fighters can cover the Royal Navy against bombers by daylight. Worth noting Fighter Command do not have to even shoot down any bombers just so long as they jog enough yet not even all pilots that a sufficient force of the RN is able to operate in the Channel....not that the Luftwaffe had a great record against mobile warships or even at this stage against stationary ones.
7) Due to the chronic shortage of landing vessels the British do not at any point need to get them all. It will take at least 6 trips without casualties to get all the German land forces proposed for Sea Lion across the Channel and then more trips to resupply those forces in combat. If the number of operational vessels drops below the resupply threshold (a threshold which btw they never met to begin with) the invasion fails.

As for German improvements all of these were the work of years not months and that was an issue when Germany needed to ready to invade the USSR by 1942 or contemplate the utter failure not merely of Hitler's master plan but likely the War against the British as well...though they should be a good few years from formal defeat their lack of economic endurance meant that the Reich would not be winning...shades of WW1 all over again.

Can I please underline all of this in red ink?
 
Another problem is that Germany can't really prepare for a successful Sealion, because they need to defeat France first. Basically Germany can't have a strong army, navy, and air force, and if they neglect the army or the air force to build the navy there's a strong chance that they can't defeat France (which was already a close call IOTL).
 
I don't think Sealion is inherently ASB if the objectives are more limited and Germany takes a fundamentally different approach to the naval war.

Instead of building battleships and bad carriers, I think you would have to have a navy built upon commerce raiders and subs.

For naval aviation, have earlier and stronger ties to Imperial Japan, including sharing technology and experience as a land power shares tank designs and tactics with a naval power that is the Britain of Asia and was being built that way. In addition, if German aviation more intelligent (Goering has to more limited) you could have significant squadrons trained in the Japanese tactics.

Germaby doesn't need aircraft carriers when it has Normandy, Norway and Denmark bases for Naval aviation.

To me the real key is not an invasion that conquers the whole country but a beachhead significant enough to crush British morale right after the loss of Dunkirk forces. The reason is that the fog of war is significant and knowledge of what is and isn't possible is far too uncertain for the populace to know in 1040 or 1941.
If you can starve Britain out you don't need to conduct Sealion.
 

CalBear

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The problem with this scenario is that it requires the UK to be radically different than the one OITL , but for no apparent reason except to push the desired result. The fascist movement in the Uk was, much like the one in the U.S., a pitiful joke. At its absolute peak the BUF had 50,000 members (out of a population of 52 million, a penetration of 0.096% of the population) and the numbers dropped like a stone once it went from a general pub level "ya, screw them guys" to an actual political movement with ideas outside of the mainstream.

Since everything in your plan requires fascism to be at least a serious threat, it is, on the face, a non starter. You have to find a way to radically change the British body politic, something that is virtually impossible. Even a worse outcome of the Great War would be far more likely to push the UK into the Communist direction than the Far Right, so the linchpin of the scenario is made of air.

That means all the rest of the points are moot (which is probably just as well, since many of them are, at best, shockingly unlikely).
 
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