Chapter 81: Operation Sea Lion goes ahead. First 2 weeks.
Operation sea lion went ahead at the highest possible tides to land its ships as close as possible to the shores. This meant July 7-11th and the 9th was picked as the "Sea Lions Day" day, delaying a few days to offer the defenders the illusion that the invasion would await the next high tides on August 5-9th. This was not to be and the German invasion forces embarked from the English channel in the evening of July 8th to land in the early morning on the 9th of July in what would be the greatest amphibious operation ever conducted. The landings were conducted between Barnham in the west (between Portsmouth and Brighton) and Folkstone in the east on a relatively narrow front of 125 km’s, with paratroopers landing at the airfields Westhampnet and Tangmere (north of Barnham), and Lympne, Hawkinge and Manston. Paratroopers were landed with gliders as well as parachutes, while giant gliders transporting tanks and Bulldozers to rapidly turn the abandoned airfields into operational status.
The British had insufficient forces and arms to effectively contest the beach landings that were supported by more than a thousand direct fire artillery guns, and the British were further incapable of counterattacking during the daytime due to absolute Luftwaffe air supremacy in southern England. Consequently, the beachheads rapidly expanded and the German air borne units captured their air fields and bridges and interrupted the railroads. This was fortunate because the landing of heavy equipment were not proceeding without troubles with several trucks, tanks and artillery pieces being stuck in the shingles.
Despite having planned for early resupply, the German 7th panzer division under general Erwin Rommel which had landed near Brighton, did clear the beaches with most of its tanks by the afternoon and then decided to rapidly sent every available tank and tracked supply vehicle west towards Portsmouth in concert with an infantry attack by the paratroopers which had landed near the air field of Westhampnet. Attacking during the night against inexperienced troops that were being infiltrated by paratrooper infantry, the German Panzer III and Panzer IV tigers could easily drive the 20 kms without resupply and were already in late night, early hours of the morning entering Portsmouth. Portsmouth was evacuated by remaining naval units during a dramatic panic in the early mornings of the 9th, at a time when the Luftwaffe seeing the prize ahead concentrated much of their CAS on Portsmouth. The escaping naval units were then met and destroyed by the forces of the Kriegsmarine waiting outside of the straits of the isle of Wight.
Portsmouth had fallen to the German Panzer virtually intact within 24 hours of the invasion which was a dramatic shock for the British defense and underpinned the German position in Southern England. In the east, the second Panzer division landing near folkstone under Heinz Guderian could not live up to Heinz Guderian’s nickname “Schnelle Hans” as it tok much longer for its tanks to clear the beaches, also here because they frequently got stuck in the shingles. Consequently, Guderian did not strike with his panzer before the 11th when a second wave of material were arriving to secure the beachhead. When he struck, he did not strike towards Dover as expected, but rather towards Ashford which was obliterated by Luftwaffe attacks and the towards Canterbury that offered stiff, but brief resistance with forces incapable of dealing with the medium and heavy German tanks. This maneuver cut off Dover from the rest of Britain and allowed linking up with the Paratroopers attacking from the east from Manston and still German forces were pouring in. Over the next three days, the Germans consolidated their gains and establish a front running from Chatham to Tonbridge, over Horsham, Midhurst and Botley outside Southampton. This meant that on the 14th, the Germans were in possession of the harbor of Portsmouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Folkestone, Dover and Ramsgate of which Portsmouth, and Brighton had been captured relatively intact and the remaining harbors were being rapidly reconstructed. The British had mounted counterattacks on the beachheads, but as in France, the tanks were committed and defeated en detail.
The Germans were now having the options of turning towards Southampton where the British defenders had been digging in or north towards Aldershot to encircle London from the west. As the port in Portsmouth was still within shelling distance from Southampton and the Isle of Weight it was decided to clear these obstacles first while the full complement of reinforcements would arrive, thereby providing a high capacity Deep-Water port for the German ships ro resupply the invasion fleet in the long run.
Southampton was thus attacked by a head-on attack while the Isle of Wight was attacked by a secondary amphibious landing. Over the next week the German panzer cleared Southampton, reached the outskirts of Aldershot and Hampshire, captured Dorking and Raigate, Seven Oaks and Rochester in heavy infantry infighting. The Panzer divisions now numbered 6, 4 of which took up position near Ramsey, 5 km’s west of Hampshire and two assembled at Rochester. Meanwhile two of the paratrooper divisions had been pulled out of front line combat as they were invisioned to perform a second landing north of the Thames near Southend.
The German advances were naturally combated from from both the air and sea, but in the air there was really nothing which could be done. The Germans maintained a continuous fighter cap over the bridgeheads and as the Germans had captured the Chain home installations (which worked the best over the sea), and installed radars of their own (which worked well on land), the Germans had all the quantitative, qualitative and tactical advantages, and the effect of the attempted RAF intervention which was demanded by desperate politicians was to rapidly destroy the RAF as a fighting force.
At sea, the odds were seemingly better and the Royal navy had maintained a superiority in cruiser and destroyer sized vessels. The problem was that the bulk of the Royal Navy had been driven off to north-west Scotland by the Luftwaffe and arrived two days late for the campaign, but this did not stop terrified politicians from demanding immediate action. En route they were intercepted by air strikes from the German Atlantic carriers groups which obviously were informed of the Sea Lion time table. The German carriers only conducted one full strength raid and then withdrew to avoid interception by land based air craft remaining in England (which was still a factor two days after Sea Lions Day). This meant that when the cruisers and destroyers finally arrived in the English Channel, several ships had been sunk or damaged and given the German air superiority, it would be suicide to conduct a raid during the day time. Problem was the night time was no better as dense new field of magnetic mines had been laid during the night south of the Isle of Wight and the area immediately to the south west of Saint Catherin’s point. Very close to sain Catherin's Point, mine laying had been impeded by shore batteries on the isle off weight, but these waters were heavily patrolled with type XII submarines. The Waters were suited for these units as the waters rapidly acquired more depth. With a submarine density of 1-2 per km there was no chance of escaping this picket line and the first burning wreckages signaled the attacks for swarms of E-boats which risked the shore batteries on the Isle of Wight. Soon the area was ablaze with cruiser and destroyer wreckages after which the German battleships and cruisers joined the battle and started to slowly pick of the disorganized enemy.
The confusion was immense, but the result was undoubtedly a royal navy disaster. It was estimated that the Royal Navy lost 4 cruisers and 12 destroyers to submarines, 2 cruisers and 9 destroyers to mines and 2 cruisers and 5 destroyers to E-boats on the approach for the loss of 23 E-boats. The German heavy units picked off a further 3 cruisers and 11 destroyers before the British withdrew and lost a further 7 destroyers to mines and 2 cruisers and 2 destroyers to submarines. The slaughter was not over because the German submarines maintained pursuit of damaged ships, sinking a further 2 destroyers, and guiding the navy Fi-167 squadrons towards the returning fleet the next morning (as it was in July, there were only a handful of dark hours) were the British cruiser force was almost completely destroyed (losing a further 3 ships and a further 11 destroyers). In total, the RN lost 18 cruisers (3 limping home damaged, 2 operational) and 61 destroyers without sinking more than 2 U-boats (submarine hunting was not the priority during such a massive and confusing battle) and 23 E-boats. Damage had been received by the German heavy units, but apart from the Deutschland class cruiser Admiral Graf Spee which was sunk by a British submarine, damage was limited as the British forces were already committed in a knife fight against the German E-boats. These events prevented the Royal Navy from taking any further action except for the use of submarines.
EDIT: Grammar, clarity and typos
