WI: Allies invade Denmark?

I am appalled by some of the suggestions made here, that warships are consumables, etc. The decks are not important, but MEN fight from those decks, you do not simply throw away thousands of lives, maybe tens of thousands, to attack into a bad location, which, even if you succeed, will mean NOTHING to the war's outcome.

From the beaches of Normandy it's about 600km to Germany proper which in OTL was very hard slogging. In Danish case the Germany proper, where the German war industry and the core of their ability to wage war was, would be much closer. A continuation landing to German coast will place Allied Armies within some 200km's to Nazi capital.

Every bomb dropped for interdiction is not falling upon some French farmer but upon German economic system, effectively combining the Allied tactical and strategic air effort to deadly efficiency it achieved in early 1945 already during summer of 1944.

The psychological effect of creating a free Germany much earlier, even if this means just, say, Schleswig-Holstein, is also significant and may mean yet faster end of the war.

Last but not least, one significant factor in delaying the Allied advance in OTL was that the logistical machinery was not capable of sustaining offensives farther than some 500-600km's from the SPOD until railways were repaired. In case of Danish operation this point is somewhere south of Hamburg (in Jutland option), in case of continuation landing on North German coast this line lies somewhere around Prague. Thus the Germans, after initial breakthrough, will not be able to rally like they did in OTL in September 1944, prolonging the war till May 1945.
 
http://mapoftheunitedstates.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/danmark.jpg

Do You guys remember the landing in Lønsstrup, Northern Jutland? Where three Canadian, American and Free French divisions smashed through the German defenses? And later the 101st Airborn very bloody assult on Aalborg Airport?

I remember hearing that the fighting in Hjørring and Sindal were rough especially then the taskforce encoutered SS Norland who had dug in farmhouses etc. And used villiagers as humanshields.

My late Granddad later told then he saw the first America GI come rolling down the main boulevard in Aalborg, that he was so happy. He had been a schoolteacher and became a translater for a group of G.I.

How did the fighing progress in later days?
 
And what were their successes in 1944? After initial successes the weapons available were quickly countered by improved tactics and electronic jamming.


The glider bomb version of the fritz x were immune to jamming. There were several reasons you didn't see any major successful strikes on dday and beyond.

1. The allies were able to put up an inpenetrable air umbrella over the normandy beaches. the glide bombs were not built to work at night so it was impossible for the germans to get ju-88s or he-111s near the beachead to employ them

2. The eastern front and the italian front had sucked up nearly all german bombing resources and redeployment was dangerous given their lack of fighters in france

a landing in denmark allows the germans to make use of their home defense airfields which were all weather with hard metal runways (ju88s with those bombs cant use improvised grassfields)

a landing in denmark necessarily gives the allies a much thinner air umbrella.

a landing in denmark lets bombers from italy and the eastern front fly into bases that are well outside the range of spitfires and p47's based in england yet close enough to strike the beachhead

the germans would have more naval assets in the area (schnellboats and shnorkel uboats) to spot for the glider bombs
 
The glider bomb version of the fritz x were immune to jamming. There were several reasons you didn't see any major successful strikes on dday and beyond.

1. The allies were able to put up an inpenetrable air umbrella over the normandy beaches. the glide bombs were not built to work at night so it was impossible for the germans to get ju-88s or he-111s near the beachead to employ them

2. The eastern front and the italian front had sucked up nearly all german bombing resources and redeployment was dangerous given their lack of fighters in france

a landing in denmark allows the germans to make use of their home defense airfields which were all weather with hard metal runways (ju88s with those bombs cant use improvised grassfields)

a landing in denmark necessarily gives the allies a much thinner air umbrella.

a landing in denmark lets bombers from italy and the eastern front fly into bases that are well outside the range of spitfires and p47's based in england yet close enough to strike the beachhead

the germans would have more naval assets in the area (schnellboats and shnorkel uboats) to spot for the glider bombs

The island of Heligoland could be taken and used as a more than adequate naval/air base to keep watch over the nearby ocean and protect ships from S-boats and U-boats.


Allied fighter aircraft would begin to operate from bases in Jutland as soon as possible. The flat terrain would make construction of airfields simple. Aircraft carriers would give way to emergency strips, emergency strips would give way to temporary bases, and temporary bases would give way to permanent airfields capable of handling bombers. P-47s and Typhoons based near Brunsbuttel could reach Hamburg in ten minutes, drop 1,000 pound bombs, and leave in another ten minutes, which would make adequate air defense of Hamburg nearly impossible.

The taking of Denmark could be an incentive for Germany to try to get her big ships in Norway (Tirpitz, Scharnhorst) back to Germany, the Netherlands, or the Baltic for fear of an invasion of Norway. If the Germans could be enticed to make a dash with those ships similar to the "channel dash" of the Prinz Eugen, the Allies would have a shot at sinking them and, more importantly, the shipping routes to Russia would be safer for Allied convoys.

Lastly, taking Denmark would cut the Germans off from Swedish iron ore, which gave them something like a third of their entire iron needs, and Norwegian oil.
 

Rubicon

Banned
The island of Heligoland could be taken and used as a more than adequate naval/air base to keep watch over the nearby ocean and protect ships from S-boats and U-boats.

Are you telling me you think it is possible to establish an air base large enough to protect an overlord style operation in Denmark from http://www.nordwestbahn.de/Bilder_Redaktion/Helgoland-Pressebild.jpg this island?


Lastly, taking Denmark would cut the Germans off from Swedish iron ore, which gave them something like a third of their entire iron needs, and Norwegian oil.

The Iron Ore shipments from Sweden to Germany had been quite drastically reduced by the summer of -44 and was not nearly as important for the German arnament industry as it had been in -39/40. Not to mention Norway had no oil, it was discovered in the -70ies IIRC.....


... are you trying to troll ? If so you're bad at it.
 
As I mentioned in a earlier post. The Allies should have smashed through the German positions near Lønstrup (see the map in my post) and pushed South.

An Invasion of Jutland and subsequent drive towards Hamburg via Jutland would have allowed the Western Allies larger land gains in Germany then in OTL.
 
The glider bomb version of the fritz x were immune to jamming.

No they were not, the command link could and was jammed which led to a situation in which only a very few succesful strikes were made. Not to mention that guiding the bomb was hard and some times even stationary targets were not hit.

1. The allies were able to put up an inpenetrable air umbrella over the normandy beaches. the glide bombs were not built to work at night so it was impossible for the germans to get ju-88s or he-111s near the beachead to employ them

Fritz-X and Hs-293 were used by specially prepared aircraft and crews of KG 40 and KG 100 which used He-177, Fw-200 and Do-217.

2. The eastern front and the italian front had sucked up nearly all german bombing resources and redeployment was dangerous given their lack of fighters in france

And would suck up resources even in case of an invasion of Denmark. Luftwaffe bombers had deteriorated in quality by Summer of 1944 and most of them were not trained to strike at naval targets anyway. Bulk of the bomber force was obsolete and would be Hellcat, Corsair or even Martlet-meat.

a landing in denmark lets bombers from italy and the eastern front fly into bases that are well outside the range of spitfires and p47's based in england yet close enough to strike the beachhead

Not outside range of heavy and medium bombers and carrier-based aircraft. Tactical aircraft airfields can be built up very quickly (as in OTL), and this is even before considering possible and likely Swedish participation.

the germans would have more naval assets in the area (schnellboats and shnorkel uboats) to spot for the glider bombs

Actually less as S-boats (7 flotillas in Channel area, 1 in the Baltic) and Schnorchel - U-boats. They would have to be redeployed from France to Denmark which takes time.
 
Are you telling me you think it is possible to establish an air base large enough to protect an overlord style operation in Denmark from http://www.nordwestbahn.de/Bilder_Redaktion/Helgoland-Pressebild.jpg this island?

The Heligoland Archipelago is like a 1/2 scale replica of Midway, complete with one big and one small island. Heligoland Island, the larger of the two, has a bay for ships. The Germans had by that time built caves in the solid rock to protect the civilians there from air raids, and these could be used for military purposes. I see on Google Earth that there is ample room to hold an airstrip twice as long as the deck of an Essex class carrier on Heligoland Island, and another on Dune Island. It's a similar concept to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The Heligoland Archipelago is like a 1/2 scale replica of Midway, complete with one big and one small island. Heligoland Island, the larger of the two, has a bay for ships. The Germans had by that time built caves in the solid rock to protect the civilians there from air raids, and these could be used for military purposes. I see on Google Earth that there is ample room to hold an airstrip twice as long as the deck of an Essex class carrier on Heligoland Island, and another on Dune Island. It's a similar concept to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier

A HALF scale Midway?:eek:

That means it can handle a MAXIMUM of 60 aircraft, probably fewer. The U.S. had less than 90 on Midway (although 18 were B-17s and 4 were twin engined B-26) and they were shoehorned into every open space.

If it had a potential landing/take off strip of less than 1,800 feet (Essex' flight deck was 872 feet in length) that also limits the aircraft that can fly out of there to single engined, fairly lightly loaded, fighters. A carrier gets aircraft off using a shorter take-off than on land by putting 25-50 knots of wind (depending on the natural winds and the speed of the carrier itself) over the flight deck which artificially shortens the take off distance.

BTW: In case anyone is wondering,the Doolittle's B-25s had a 30 knot ship sailing into a 40+ knot gale when they launched off the Hornet. Also, a B-17 needed 3,400 feet as a minimum runway for take off, an empty B-25 needed around 1,500 ft, more with bombs, defensive guns & armor.
 
There's another spot for a 2,000 foot airstrip built atop the rocky elevated area of the island. It would take longer to build but it could be managed, and it could be 3,000 feet if we choose to have the Allies evict the civilian population. Since the distance from Heligoland to Britain is one-sixth the distance from Midway to Oahu, it would not need to be as well supplied and stocked. That means more space for planes and bombs, and less space for water tanks, oil tanks, etc. Besides the island already had a civilian population and the Germans had been using it as a military installation. That's why there were no less than 13 bombing raids against the island, culminating in a 969-bomber raid on April 19, 1945-- just to destroy a "half-scale Midway."

Anyway, German S-boats and U-boats would have to be recalled from other theaters to attack shipping in the North Sea. Whether they were attacking ships in the South Atlantic, the North Atlantic, or the North Sea would make little difference. Aircraft based in England and Scotland could escort the convoys to the landing beaches. The Luftwaffe was by this time running out of fuel and would be hard pressed to attack these convoys. In addition, since by this time maritime aircraft was controlled by Goering and the Air Force, as oppose to the Navy, coordinated attacks with aircraft and submarines would be difficult if not impossible, especially since the Allies were excellent codebreakers of the German "Enigma."
 
Top