WI Invasion of Norway fails alternate WW2

Driftless

Donor
I wonder if Norway can get some of the 140 Curtiss H-81A's/Tomahawk I's from the French order.Neither they or the H-75's were high altitude interceptors, but they are better than Gladiators.
The Norwegians had some of their own Hawks partially assembled on April 9, but not yet combat ready. Those planes should have been a better match(than the Gladiators) for the Me-110's of the initial attack force on the airports at Oslo & Stavanger.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
The Norwegians had some of their own Hawks partially assembled on April 9, but not yet combat ready. Those planes should have been a better match(than the Gladiators) for the Me-110's of the initial attack force on the airports at Oslo & Stavanger.

Yes, the Germans captured the 24 H-75A-6's with P&W Twin Wasps either partially assembled or still in crates. Many went to Finland. The 36 H75A-8's with Curtiss Cyclones were impounded before sailing and given to the Free Norwegian Air Force in Canada. Most of the French planes which were stranded in Britain had Cyclones. The British had @50 Hawk 75A-1/2/3's with P&W engines and 190 Hawk 75A-4"s with Curtiss engines. They seized 9 Persian planes similar to the H75A-4's. A Curtiss assembly line which operated in Chins was moved to India in 1942. The Brits used several planes built on this line before shutting it down. Indian NCO's were requesting flight training. The SAAF received 72 H-75A-4's. The RAF used 20-30 planes over Burma. Plenty more were available for Norway. The H75 suffered in top speed and altitude performance, but otherwise well liked. The original H81 was an H75 with an Allison grafted to the fuselage. With additional plumbing, possibly a counterweight in the tail, the new plane gained @800 lbs empty but wasn't any faster until the aerodynamics were improved by wind tunnel testing.

Sorry for the diatribe. I happen to like the P-36/H75.:p
 

Driftless

Donor
Sorry for the diatribe. I happen to like the P-36/H75.:p

Same here :biggrin:

My standard assessment for the Hawk/P-36's: while they were on the back side of the technology bell curve at the start of the war, they proved to be very useful planes wherever they served. As you note, they had a fairly convoluted sales vs use history.

Like all things with the OTL campaign, the Norwegians needed a few more weeks; provided the cabinet had an epiphany that neutrality was not bullet-proof.
 
Some of us think Norway can hold most of the south with minor changes to the course of several RN groups and a full, well publicized mobilization.
On the subject of minor changes to the course of several RN groups my understanding is that the Admiralty interpreted the Kriegsmarine's preparations as "another round in the war of nerves" IIRC from reading Roskill and then as preparations for a breakout into the Atlantic. If they were interpreted as preparations for an invasion or Norway could the Home Fleet have been in a position to intercept the Covering Force, Group I and Group II before they split up?

IIRC the Home Fleet when it did put to sea consisted of 3 capital ships, 6 cruisers and 21 destroyers. If Renown and her screen is included that is a total of 4 capital ships, 6 cruisers and 30 destroyers against a German force of 2 capital ships, one heavy cruiser and 14 destroyers.

Edit. And I have read this.
About ten years ago, there was a nice little piece on the NavWeaps Discussion Boards Naval Fiction board entitled "Norway Fiasco". It might be considered a BritWank, but the OTL campaign seemed to be a GermanWank.

Here's the first chapter:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/warships1discussionboards/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=7918&p=7567&hilit=Norway+Fiasco#p7567
 
Same here :biggrin:

My standard assessment for the Hawk/P-36's: while they were on the back side of the technology bell curve at the start of the war, they proved to be very useful planes wherever they served. As you note, they had a fairly convoluted sales vs use history.

Like all things with the OTL campaign, the Norwegians needed a few more weeks; provided the cabinet had an epiphany that neutrality was not bullet-proof.

As an American who likes to study this stuff, I've come to the conclusion that the P-36 and its variants get short shrift in a lot of US histories because its combat career in US markings is measured in hours - a few sorties on the morning December 7th (including one by some guy named Gabreski).

It did have a decent combat record. French pilots did well with it in a losing effort in 1940 and the RAF maintained two squadrons in India well into 1943 and they did see action. It is one of the few Allied fighters that could turn with a Ki-43 Oscar and as others have pointed out it saw service around the world with the SAAF, the Chinese, and the Norwegians. I think a couple of operational squadrons in April 1940 could have given the Germans a bad time. What effect that has I don't know but I am of the opinion that like a lot of Japanese operations in 1942, it would not take much to through the Germans' Norway campaign off the rails.
 
Somebody else may have pointed this out but a failed Norway invasion or even the Allies deciding to hold on to Narvik probably butterflies away the loss of HMS Glorious because she would not be rescuing RAF fighters from northern Norway in early June.
 
I had thought about creating a new thread for this then I remembered that I already had a thread that started with the pod so I thought I would put it here. It is more of an overview so it's not very detailed and I have rewritten parts of it several times so it might also be a little choppy but I was hopping to get feedback on where it could be better or I pushed it more than believable.



Europe had been on a slow march to war but it finally came in September of 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and was joined by the Soviets and France and Britain declared war on Germany. Poland didn’t resist long and its allies made little attempt to actually help them resist the invasion. In November of that same year the Soviets attacked Finland and by March of 1940 came to terms seeing Finland cede several areas to end the fighting. April saw the Germans invade Denmark and Norway with Denmark putting up very little resistance though the Norwegians had started a full mobilization when the landings were happening. The landing at Narvik was thwarted by the HMS Renown and her destroyer escorts who were laying mines meet them and sank several of the ships before they could escape and the landing at Kristiansand was repulsed by the costal defenses emplaced there. Landings at Trondheim, Bergan and Egersund went much more favorably for the Germans including the fallschrimjagers landing at Sola and Fornebu though they barely drove off the defenders for long enough to be reinforced by air. The fortress at Oscarsborg sank the Blucher and Lutzow taking most of the forces tasked with taking Oslo down with them. The fleet air arm launched an attack on Bergen from Orkney and one on Trondheim from the ships HMS Glorious and Furious though the latter achieved very little. British landings soon took place at to retake Trondheim and Norwegian plans were in motion to retake Bergen. With British and French reinforcement the Norwegians were soon pushing the Germans out of the country and by the end of May the Germans were completely out of Norway which though things were starting to go south in France for the allies.


In early May the Germans invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and France and soon the British Expeditionary Force was joining the fighting on the continent. Things had gone so poorly that on May 26 they started large scale evacuation of forces from Dunkirk and seeing the collapse of French resistance and their eventual surrender on June 21. While continental Europe was being occupied by Germany and the collaborationist Vichy government not all in France wanted this French forces that chose to fight against the Germans would become known as the Free French under the command of Charles de Gaulle. The colonies though mostly declared for the Vichy government so de Gaulle would have to fight to get the colonies on his side which became easier when he convinced the forces at Dakar to come under his command soon after that the rest of French West Africa and the other French colonies would join though North Africa would be harder to flip. French forces would join in on Operation Compass while the British were waiting for reinforcements from East Africa once fighting finished there while also sending forces to try and help Greece. Victory in North Africa came about shortly before the collapse of the Greek defenses in April of 1941 and the evacuation of British and Greek troops, along with some of the government and the treasury, to the island of Crete where they would establish a provisional government and coordinate with resistance groups. New Zealand forces who had been stationed on Crete would face an attack by German paratroopers which they managed to repel.


Though they had hoped to have completely knocked Britain and France out of the war entirely the Germans felt secure enough with them in no position to directly interfere and with Hitler’s obsession of attacking the soviets they preceded with operation Barbarossa. The attacks caught the Soviets unprepared and led to large gains and by October they were moving on Moscow though they were starting to come up on the limits of their logistics and would fall short of that target. 1942 saw further gains in the south were they reached Stalingrad and moved to capture the oilfields in the caucus though logistics prevented that from happening and there would be the extent of their advances.


With the invasion of the Soviet Union Stalin would start his almost continuous pressure on the allies to open up a second front on the Germans. The problem was that they lacked the resources to do so. Britain was maximizing and modernizing their own production and was stretching their man power as it was some of which would be going east with new equipment, France was trying to raise units in the colonies while buying equipment from America like the Polish and Greek forces eager to get to their own homelands. Even with the resources stretched thin the British and Greeks would plan for some amphibious landing in the Dodecanese Islands in December of 1941. The Free French Forces following on from the success at Dakar would try to convince the Vichy areas to join them but the North African areas would wait until Hitler decided to fully occupy the remaining areas and seize the few French ships in port there in May of 1942 which would allow staging from there for the invasion of Sicily. The occupation of France and the defection of the last of the colonies, Indochina would remain loyal to Vichy but the Japanese would force them out and create a puppet government there, would finally bring American recognition of de Gaulle’s government. American entry into the war in 1941 would have little effect until late in 1942 as they rushed to train and equip the forces they would need to fight the war and they would push for an immediate invasion of France, which de Gaulle obviously supported, but the British were able to convince them to start smaller so they could build up for the invasion and more thoroughly prepare including spectacularly effective deception operations.


With the fall of Sicily and their Dodecanese islands the cracks in Italy really started to show and negotiations for their surrender started up and shortly before the invasion of France was set to begin they would have to sift forces to Italy since they finally agreed to surrendered. While they now had to pivot the southern France landings to Italy to take them out of the war the landings in the North still took place in June of 43. While Italy had surrendered the German forces there didn’t intend to just let the allies walk into Italy and seized the military fortifications and disarmed their former allies and managed to avoid the initial trap the allies tried to set but they would quickly be forced north of Rome. The invasion of Italy delayed landings in southern France for months until the front lines stabilized in northern Italy but when they did come they meet with huge success with the German army becoming over stretched the allies were once again able to make large gains and quickly linked up with the forces pushing south alleviating their increasing supply problems. Churchill who had been pushing for the soft underbelly approach since the beginning would finally have the ability to try it with German forces being pulled from the Balkans to throw at the advancing Soviets leaving the area vulnerable. Greece would fall quite easily with coordination with the local resistance and British forces would move to the north and wait for the logistics to be available for them to push further.


Fearing all was lost and hoping to improve the situation after the war some in the military managed a coup which would install its own leadership that tried to negotiate surrender with the west that allowed them to keep fighting in the east but they were unable to achieve those goals. The coup also saw the defection of one of Germany’s former ally Bulgaria to the allies, the British having forces stationed in the area were able to move in accept their surrender. Some of the resistance movements would make big moves to try and seize control of their own countries. Yugoslavia managed to do it successfully being more able to receive allied support than Poland who received supplies mostly by air so their attempt to liberate themselves was put down bloodily. The new government in charge of Germany tried to move most of their forces east but large groups would refuse the order and stood and fought slowing the allies march across Germany. After the coup and the advances made in Italy and the liberation of Greece the allies started to push more forces into the Balkans, more at British insistence than anything else, to try and better position for the post war they did manage to largely bypass some of the German forces tied down by partisan forces. The Soviets had made steady progress in the east since the low point of 1942 they had recaptured most of their own territory by 1944 and would meet the allies at various points from Poland to Rumania.
 
Baltic invasion? In what way is the North Sea like the Baltic?

If I may for a moment, I think that the poster is referring to the Germans concentrating on the stretch of coastline along Norway's southern coast east of the black line I've drawn through the Danish straits:

c5C6Zuu.png


The region is both shallow and narrow enough that the Germans could block the straits off from the RN with dense minefields and their control of Denmark would make it too difficult for the Royal Navy to safely clear them. However, there does remain a rather obvious and glaring downside here: it drastically limits the German invasion options to the region immediately around Oslo, something the British and Norwegians would be extremely aware of, thereby allowing them to concentrate their ground defenses. And attacking concentrated forces is a Very Bad Thing for amphibious operations.

Also, I don't see why the East would be the same or worse for the Soviets as compared to IOTL if the WAllies hold onto Norway: not only would the Murmansk route being much less dangerous allow L-L to ramp up faster, sooner but it also could lead to Finland staying neutral and German economic problems from the loss of Narvik ore imports putting a crimp in the build-up.
 

Driftless

Donor
Allied control of Narvik and other parts of Northern Norway puts Finland in a hard spot... From mid-1940 to mid-1941, Allied help for the Finns would be limited, as the British are trying to scrape together enough for their own efforts, plus keep some French, Greek, and others in the fight. After Barbarossa, even that meager supply probably throttles back. The Allies really want to keep the USSR fighting the Nazi's, but don't want Stalin to press any farther west in Finland.

What would the Allies do in that situation to offset the German aid to Finland? Anything, or harumph alot? Maybe diplomatically try to lever Stalin to step back from the Finnish border in return for L-L?
 
What would the Allies do in that situation to offset the German aid to Finland?

Simply being in Norway nullifies a good portion of that aid, which was sent to Finland via Norway while altering the geo-political context enough that the defense arrangements Finland tried in the interim between the Winter and Continuation War with the British would be actually rather meaningful, seeing as Finland would not longer be physically isolated.

Maybe diplomatically try to lever Stalin to step back from the Finnish border in return for L-L?

To which Stalin could very well reply: "Karelia is the only thing preventing the Germans from completely cutting off the land routes to Leningrad. The city could starve and fall if that happens! Do you want to help the Germans?!"
 
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Driftless

Donor
Simply being in Norway nullifies a good portion of that aid, which was sent to Finland via Norway...

Some German support would come across the Baltic in warmer weather.


To which Stalin could very well reply: "Karelia is the only thing preventing the Germans from completely cutting off the land routes to Leningrad. The city could starve and fall if that happens! Do you want to help the Germans?!"

Oh yes, there could well have been a definite diplomatic shoving match, with Finland getting stepped on by all three "sides". In our history, the Allies were pretty much sidelined by geography when it came to Finland after 1940
 
Some German support would come across the Baltic in warmer weather.

Which is a lot more limited then what the Germans could provide (and vice-versa) compared to IOTL. Would the Finns throw in with the Germans if they could only provide a fraction of the assistance they bought the Finns with IOTL? What about the possibility of the Brits (and later, the Americans) launching much more effective raids, if not an outright invasion, from their footholds in Norway? The lack of German occupation of Norway both means Finland retains it's ability to import fertilizer and foodstuffs as well as limiting the German's ability to export it to the Finns, but joining the war against the Soviets could see the WAllies cut off that access leaving Finland with a drastic shortfall.
 
Which is a lot more limited then what the Germans could provide (and vice-versa) compared to IOTL. Would the Finns throw in with the Germans if they could only provide a fraction of the assistance they bought the Finns with IOTL? What about the possibility of the Brits (and later, the Americans) launching much more effective raids, if not an outright invasion, from their footholds in Norway? The lack of German occupation of Norway both means Finland retains it's ability to import fertilizer and foodstuffs as well as limiting the German's ability to export it to the Finns, but joining the war against the Soviets could see the WAllies cut off that access leaving Finland with a drastic shortfall.
I was thinking the Finns would try and get the west to at least agree to them going up the previous border but not any further and from there trying to get out of it and keep the borders there after the war which probably depend on how far east the line is where the fronts connect.
 
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