What if Sealion had happened

Okay thank you everyone. I learned something today. The German Air Force was no match for the RAF at all. It wasnt their tactics that was flawed and failed. It was everything and they were no match. They couild never have defeated the British

The problem is the margin of victory required. As others have alluded above the Luftwaffe needs not merely to beat Fighter Command but ensure it stays beaten while it then turns its attention to Bomber and Coastal Command, the British Army and the infrastructure supporting the defence of Great Britain. Then once that was done that it needed to ensure it had enough strength to beat the Royal Navy quickly enough the RN was not able to take a significant number of invasion transports with it. While still ensuring the RAF did not come back into the fight.

Fighter Command did give serious thought to what might happen if it started to be seriously attrited in the South East. The solution it came up with was to withdraw its 11 Group allocated fighters to the north. At which point Göring would have turned his bombers against the above mentioned targets which would have been a problem for the Luftwaffe when they tried to go after the more northerly based reserves and factories as they would have found fighters waiting for them where they likely lacked much in the way of single engine escorts.

Now Göring might decide not to go after targets outside BF109 range and declare air victory. At which point the invasion goes ahead at which point the RAF returns in force to its Kent and Sussex airfields and the RN launches its counter invasion forces into action. Leaving the Luftwaffe both to stop the RN and RAF at the same time. Now if it does a reasonable job in the Air Battle of Britain you can see the Luftwaffe gets to join the Air-Naval Battle of Britain and if it does reasonably well in the Air-Naval Battle of Britain it gets to join in the Air-Land Battle of Britain.

So if the Luftwaffe has been a lot more effective than OTL it then has to be even more effective to stop the RN crushing the invasion to the point the coastal crust mops up the handful of Landsers that stagger ashore and then gets the fun of making up for the KM's inability to land artillery with the assaulting infantry while continuing to cover for the KM's inability to be a Navy that can stop the Royal Navy in the English Channel all the while still doing its job as an air force and countering the remnant RAF. The British on the other hand only have to do well just in one of those and the fight is over.
 
Okay thank you everyone. I learned something today. The German Air Force was no match for the RAF at all. It wasnt their tactics that was flawed and failed. It was everything and they were no match. They couild never have defeated the British
Like DaveBC and the other respondents to this post, I think it's possible, even with the balance of forces as at July10 1940 (Official start of the Battle of Britain) for the Luftwaffe to do better than OTL. A big problem for Germany (biggest IMHO) was their lack of understanding as to how Britain's air defence system was an integrated whole. Two chains of Radar stations plus inland Observer Corps posts, that fed Fighter Command's central plotting system and in turn its network of Group and sector operations control rooms. The potentially vulnerable points were the sector stations and the radar network. Concentrate on those and the LW can degrade the RAF's efficiency. But the Germans didn't know that and didn't even know which airfields were sector stations with operations rooms. The attacks on the radar stations was abandoned as the Germans thought they had little effect. In fact one station (Ventnor IIRC) was knocked out for a while but a mobile set was put in place. This was far less useful but it denied the Germans knowledge that the main station was KO. It was obviously put back on line asap but a sustained attack on the radar stations would have had a deleterious effect. Ditto for the sector stations, disrupt these or their associated ops control rooms - which were on the station grounds and relatively unprotected - would have hurt Fighter Command's ability to respond to air raids*.

IMHO even if German intelligence was better than OTL this improved performance would not be enough to gain the lasting air supremacy needed for the USM. In extremis Dowding would have pulled most of 11 Group back to stations north of the Thames. Mobile radar sets on the Downs could substitute to an extent for out of action fixed ones on the Coast and the Observer Corps network was almost immune from interference. New control rooms could have been built off stations wherever suitable phone lines could be installed and the network of airfields in southern England means that the fighter squadrons could then return south of the Thames if required. I fact I think they would only need to land to rearm and refuel before returning to combat and then back to safer stations beyond effective German reach.

However, I think there's a slim chance the Germans might believe a sudden lessening of the tempo of RAF operations (while it was re-organising as in the previous paragraph) indicated the RAF was now weak enough for Sealion to be launched. With all the gory results that were implied by the famous Sandhurst Wargame in the 1970s. Or probably even worse, since the chance of the RN being caught napping and the first wave getting ashore unharmed would be less if Britain looked more vulnerable than usual. As it would with the RAF reduced in effectiveness.

* Most of this paragraph comes from The Narrow Margin (Wood and Dempster). There are more recent books on the BOB but this has a useful analysis of the rival air forces structures and organisation. I'm unaware of any research contradicting their conclusion, but would be interested to hear of it
 
Last edited:
Top