How difficult would ground combat be for the Heer if they successfully landed in Britain?
Extremely. The total lack of amphibious assault assets and NGF would leave them vulnerable even to light British defending forces.
How difficult would ground combat be for the Heer if they successfully landed in Britain?
I'm not asking about whether they'll succeed, because they won't. What I'm asking is what will it take to make OKW believe an invasion of the British Isles is something they should go ahead with. Is winning the Battle of Britain enough? Would a Sealion require postponing Barbarossa?
An awful lot of people posting here dont see to have read this initial post. We aren't talking about a successful SeaLion, just what would persuade the Germans to actually launch it.
Not sure if a better Dunkirk would make much difference. The germans thought that the amount of equipment captured meant the British had a load more stockpiled, and they know substantial numbers had been retrieved from southern France, and there we considerable forces in Britain. But Britain can be defended by one man and his dog, so long as the Royal Navy commands the Channel.
The reall success needs to be the air war, as its pretty obvious to the OKW that unless the LW can stop the Royal Navy, the sea crossing is toast. So the BoB has to go better, and to be perceived as going a LOT better. Micheles 'A Better Show'handles this very well.
The problem is that, unless we apply near-ASB levels of advantages, the LW can't do tremendoulsy better. But they can seem to do so to Goering,enough so that SeaLion could be launched.
If you allow for triple this, to cover stone and other fill, a distance of 40km and an average depth of 125m that'd be enough for a causeway 10m wide.OTL, the Atlantic Wall used 17 million cubic meters of concrete. A bit more than Hoover Dam. There's your start
Now it's just an engineering problem...
Drag some sea-coloured canvas over the workers' heads. Problem solved.One might think the RN and RAF just might do something about this...
Bah, Goering has promised to deal with them.One might think the RN and RAF just might do something about this...
Bah, Goering has promised to deal with them.
Oh and the actual depth of the channel around the narrow bit is less than 50m, so the causeway could be even wider.
I actually have no clue how much material would be required for a 2-lane Channel Autobahn... but I bet Speer would be willing to try![]()
How difficult would ground combat be for the Heer if they successfully landed in Britain?
5. German bombers never let up on attacking RAF bases and achieve temporary air superiority.
I don't think it was on otl. That's why I had Britain get unlucky and have a big chunk of their airbase support staff in France caught.This assumes that it will be possible for the Germans to achieve air superiority, even temporary, by continuing to attack RAF bases.
Maybe you are right.Mmm.
1. The crunch at the beginning of Septmber was much more as to truly experienced pilots than as to airplanes.
2. Additionally, the most important repair work was that done on the more seriously damaged fighters. That was mostly done by the CRO, a civilian organization that had not been deployed to France.