WI: Spain Wins the Battle of Gravelines and Invades England?

Unless the few ships that get back to Spain crash into the spanish coast and cause nuclear explosions on impact, i dunno how to make the disaster of the Big and Happy Armada even worse. It was pretty much worst case scenario.

:D
 
Is there a way to make the Spanish defeat worse?
IIRC then Philip, in his role as as King of Portugal, had sent a Portuguese squadron along as part of the Armada. Could we have the loss of those ships & their crews in such a badly-run enterprise trigger a Portuguese rebellion against him?
 
You know, I have to come out and say this... I find it very hard to come up with victorious Armada scenarios, not out of affection for the English, but to the simple fact that the whole plan was horribly thought out, a very 'late Philip' scheme--when he stopped being "Philip the Prudent" and started being "Philip the Hideously Impractical"--that trusted in numbers and God's favor to see them to a dimly comprehended victory, something Don John would dream up in his worst moments. I'm not even sure Philip had a genuine endgame plotted out, so much as a vague feeling that if he invaded England things would just... work out. While I've no doubt the Spanish forces could have messed up England considerably, I'm less certain that this wouldn't turn into another sort of debacle if the invasion had gone off...
 
That makes me think... The defeat was bad, sinking the army in the Channel would be disastrous, but perhaps the real game changer would be if much of the army actually lands in England and then gets bogged down in some kind of long, drawn-out resistance. If it was just successful enough that Philip would be unwilling to abandon the project and would thus keep pouring more and more resources down that hole, that might truly mean the downfall of Spain.
 
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