Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Ketara wrote:
The German Schwerer Gustav is about the only land gun capable of dealing out really decisive damage to a battleship, as it was about a 31 inch gun (bigger than anything in naval service).

Aye, that's the one - 80cm is about 31 inches. And a 7.1 ton projectile...

But hitting - the battleship would have to be stationary or on a steady course with very precise gunnery calculations. Not worth trying unless it's critical.

I want to make sure I'm clear on this and not get lump with "Invade England Can Do" group.

My angle is drawing in UK asset and having a general shoot out with UK under the impression of imminent invasion from Germany

Spetulhu wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
The German Schwerer Gustav is about the only land gun capable of dealing out really decisive damage to a battleship, as it was about a 31 inch gun (bigger than anything in naval service).

Aye, that's the one - 80cm is about 31 inches. And a 7.1 ton projectile...

But hitting - the battleship would have to be stationary or on a steady course with very precise gunnery calculations. Not worth trying unless it's critical.

Unless it was very pre t planned, those guns where a right effert to ever target anything.
They where massive, slow to target and fire. Odds low. That gun was very powerful but it was slow to do anything at all.

The big guns could do damage but there easy targets once bracketeted by a moving ship. Then there dead. A railway gun cannot move anywhere fast and once located vunranle to the counter battery fire.

After reading some pretty serious discussions of World War II alternate history, I'm starting to realize how unlikely the success that Germany even had.

I almost wonder if in some alternate timeline, people are wondering how the Ardennes offensive could have worked out for Germany, or if it were ever possible for Germany to defeat the French and British.

It is a situation that occurs in one SF novel I have read.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The RN used a non-slip material called Corticene. It came in several shades of brown depending on the manufacturer and age.

The deck armour depends on the ship and can be looked up in Jane's or Conway's. RN carriers had armoured decks. Kamikaze planes bounced off them.

Merchant Navy and civilian ships would use various materials.

Yeah. The UK practically designed all the good stuff that comes with a modern Aircraft Carrier. We just didn't really use them that much ourselves, including letting a uBoat sink one.

Some of the older vessels ( HMS Hood) still retained their old WW1 armour belts, which was a little thin on top. That's how a plunging she'll basically took her out.

 Polonius wrote:
After reading some pretty serious discussions of World War II alternate history, I'm starting to realize how unlikely the success that Germany even had.

I almost wonder if in some alternate timeline, people are wondering how the Ardennes offensive could have worked out for Germany, or if it were ever possible for Germany to defeat the French and British.

A lot of it is a great lesson in how morale, leadership, mindset, daring and determination can make the difference in war between opponents of roughly equal technology but different troop strengths. The Germans won a lot of victories basically because their opposition was incompetent, confused, slow, or quite simply unprepared. France had every material advantage in 1941, but a nationwide PTSD from WW1, incompetent high command, and deep domestic political divison meant they couldnt/didnt utilize what they had effectively. Had they had a military staff that was a mirror of Germany's, Germany would have been done in 1939, not 1945.

Ketara wrote:
Breachable with what? Light machine guns, grenades, and anti-tank guns? It's a canal!

In this area, the Canal was covered by a bare handful of pillboxes. Further inland it was covered by rail car artillery. This was well known to the Germans, who had used this crazy thing called a surveillance aircraft to fly over the area and photograph it to pinpoint the location of static defenses. No psychic powers required. As far as taking those pillboxes goes, if surprise is achieved, you're looking at a couple men and a few grenades swimming the canal in the dark.

Ketara wrote:
What Admirals do and don't do in planning often has very little to do with what actually happens on the day when the decisions are taken.

Regardless, point 1. Context. Admiralty planning no doubt took one look at the situation and decided that cruisers and destroyers were all that was needed. They also no doubt concurred invasion was highly unlikely. The proof? The fact that they didn't reassign more units to the defence of the homeland. They simply didn't rate German invasion as that high a risk, and so didn't feel the need to risk the bigger ships.

Actually they spelled out the reasoning quite thoroughly that they did not wish risking the loss of their battleships. They felt the loss of the smaller ships would be acceptable, as Canadian shipyards could more easily replace them.

Ketara wrote:
I repeat, they had full reign, sank a couple of destroyers, and dented a few more.

And were hitting the transports as targets of opportunity rather than the focus of their operation.

Ketara wrote:
Means absolutely diddley squat in the context of this discussion. We're talking about warships, with AA, higher speeds, damage containment and more. Divebombing Gramps Longbeard's yacht at Dunkirk or dropping high explosive on a collier really isn't here nor there.

Actually it refutes your point about them not having the supplies to do it or the skill to hit a moving ship.

Ketara wrote:
God forbid the local port authorities ever rigged it blow, and then the RN sent a battleship through a day later to pound it and make sure it was out of commission. Or just kitted out a couple of really big merchantmen to use as blockships (Zeebrugge style!). Or positioned artillery around it before the next German wave could really deploy and started dropping shells on it as German ships tried to dock.

]

It's pretty clear you looked at absolutely zero of the photos from that period I posted in the other thread that would have demonstrated how what your saying would not have worked. But I'll break it down for you:

Folkstone outer harbor, which is the large vessel docking point at this time, does not have a 'mouth', as such, so there's no channel to sink a ship in. (Inner habor you could)



This is in 1933, but had not appreciably changed. While a battleship could, in theory, do it, it would be time consuming due to sheer mass of the pier (as the US found, Ap is useless in this situation, and HE takes time to wear down something like this). Assuming that, and I grant this is a fairly large assumption, that the beach guns over Folkstone were taken wholly or partially intact (depends on a wide variety of factors, but Calais showed it was possible for a small commando team to take much heavier defensive emplacements without a fight if surprise is achieved) there would be 14 inch gun emplacements raining hell on any battleship trying.

chaos0xomega wrote:
88s wouldn't even dent the armor on a cruiser, let alone a Battleship. Hell, most Destroyers could probably shrug off hits from an 88 to their hull (though not necessarily to their superstructure/deck).

At the limits of it's range (as a naval gun approx 10km), the 88 had approx 35mm penetration (about 1.3 inches). The Fletcher class DD (one of the most common of WW2) had armor about 1/2" to 3/4" inch thick. Compare to the 1.5 inches of a early M4 Sherman's side armor.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Many of those "ships" were civilian shipping and merchant vessels which usually were sunk or otherwise disintegrated (being made of wood and all) by machine gun and cannon fire, or were just 'close enough' to where the bomb landed in the water when it inevitably missed its target.

You underestimate how much damage a ship can actually withstand without sinking.

This is the USS Mindanao, a Liberty ship converted to a repair ship. She was caught in the explosion of the ammunition ship USS Mount Hood.



In 1980 she was sunk as a reef near Daytona, FL.

chaos0xomega wrote:
That's to say nothing of the leadership situation (or lack thereof) that resulted in poorly prepared and planned defenses.

In all fairness the German command was entirely decapitated before anyone even jumped, having all been placed on the same aircraft, the only one to be lost.

Frazzled wrote:Germany's loss of Bismark and Graf Spee would also have impacted.

Bismarck wasn't lost until May of 1941. At this time, it was still very much available.

 BaronIveagh wrote:


In this area, the Canal was covered by a bare handful of pillboxes. Further inland it was covered by rail car artillery. This was well known to the Germans, who had used this crazy thing called a surveillance aircraft to fly over the area and photograph it to pinpoint the location of static defenses. No psychic powers required. As far as taking those pillboxes goes, if surprise is achieved, you're looking at a couple men and a few grenades swimming the canal in the dark.

Can you clarify here, are you talking about somehow destroying ('breaching' was the word you used) a section of the canal, or just swimming across it? Because if it's the latter, quite frankly, I could swim it.

Actually they spelled out the reasoning quite thoroughly that they did not wish risking the loss of their battleships. They felt the loss of the smaller ships would be acceptable, as Canadian shipyards could more easily replace them.

Sure. So, as I said, it was felt that if there was even the slightest risk of damage to battleships (which there would have been, there's always the risk of missing a mine), and the small ships can do the job, let them do it. Economy of force.

Actually it refutes your point about them not having the supplies to do it or the skill to hit a moving ship.

It does nothing of the sort. I never said they didn't have the 'skill' to hit a moving ship. I said it was more difficult, especially when attacking faster warships that were moving (because warships and cargo ships are built along completely different architectural lines). I never said it was impossible they could blow up a ship. I said the munitions they had to use weren't well suited to it, and forced them to use riskier attack methods which exposed them to counter fire. I also said that those munitions would have difficulty damaging the larger ships in the fleet.

If you honestly think that showing a stuka can sink a private yacht refutes the above, then I'm clueless as to how your logic is working on this one.

It's pretty clear you looked at absolutely zero of the photos from that period I posted in the other thread that would have demonstrated how what your saying would not have worked. But I'll break it down for you:

Folkstone outer harbor, which is the large vessel docking point at this time, does not have a 'mouth', as such, so there's no channel to sink a ship in. (Inner habor you could)



This is in 1933, but had not appreciably changed. While a battleship could, in theory, do it, it would be time consuming due to sheer mass of the pier (as the US found, Ap is useless in this situation, and HE takes time to wear down something like this). Assuming that, and I grant this is a fairly large assumption, that the beach guns over Folkstone were taken wholly or partially intact (depends on a wide variety of factors, but Calais showed it was possible for a small commando team to take much heavier defensive emplacements without a fight if surprise is achieved) there would be 14 inch gun emplacements raining hell on any battleship trying.

I don't think you grasp the reason for needing a port. The point of taking a port is that it has sections alongside which you can berth a ship to offload. If you sink a blockship next to the pier, it prevents other ships from being able to tie up (as they'd tear the underside of their ship off on the submerged or partially submerged one). If I grab four or five merchantment, and scuttle them at appropriate points around that harbour, it would be utterly useless as a docking facility. A bunch of paratroopers aren't going to have the skill to remove them. If the pier has been half trashed by explosives as well, there's absolutely no way you're going to be able to use it as a port facility.

With regards to taking guns, again, it's very easy to sabotage something like that. I suppose it is possible they could be taken by surprise, and the paratroopers could cross the canal by surprise, but that means essentially that Germany would have to invade Britain completely by surprise in the middle of a war. So they'd have to basically be ninjas.

So yes, I concede, if German soldiers are ninjas, everything is fine!

BaronIveagh wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
88s wouldn't even dent the armor on a cruiser, let alone a Battleship. Hell, most Destroyers could probably shrug off hits from an 88 to their hull (though not necessarily to their superstructure/deck).

At the limits of it's range (as a naval gun approx 10km), the 88 had approx 35mm penetration (about 1.3 inches). The Fletcher class DD (one of the most common of WW2) had armor about 1/2" to 3/4" inch thick. Compare to the 1.5 inches of a early M4 Sherman's side armor.

It is worth keeping in mind here that warship armour is usually of a better quality, thickness on thickness, than that of a tank. If you look at a battleship, the armour is created through the most heavy of engineering processes such as face-hardening or cementation, and uses quantities of metals such as vanadium, molybdenum, or nickel. Without checking, I couldn't say whether or not an 88mm gun would have much luck against any given destroyer class, but that's because different ships of different classes of different nations use different materials. Nevertheless, tank armour of that period was usually inferior in quality to that used in naval fields, millimetre to millimetre.

Handfull of pill boxes?

I could take you to farms where there are 1-2 in every field. How many do you suspect the stealth ninja Nazis can take down before Dad's army would wake up from their comedy japes to put some cold steel up 'em?

The other funny thing is how many ships and of what type you imagine Folkstone harbour would accommodate?

It's tiny and filled with sand. The Harbour wall has next to no unloading equipment, you just wouldn't land heavy equipment there. The first low tide would maroon any loaded ship of any size (assuming you could fit it adjacent to the pier, sorry harbour wall.

It really isn't feasible.

 Ketara wrote:

With regards to taking guns, again, it's very easy to sabotage something like that. I suppose it is possible they could be taken by surprise, and the paratroopers could cross the canal by surprise, but that means essentially that Germany would have to invade Britain completely by surprise in the middle of a war. So they'd have to basically be ninjas.

By that logic, the Allies landed thousands of ninjas in France, on June 6, 1944.

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas. In fact, the element surprise was one of England's biggest concerns. The Germans had managed to take their enemies by surprise over and over in the war, not the least of which the invasion of France. Brooke wasn't entirely sold he could win with the forces and materials he had at hand, and it largely hung on how many tanks the Germans got ashore before the Navy could stop them by his estimate.

Personally, I think that the invasion would have been a mixed bag, with a lot of variables in play (how many channel facing gun positions were taken intact, how many of what made it on shore, expansion of German air support, etc etc).

But I think it would have broken Britain politically if the Germans were to hold on to their foothold for a month or two. Even if their invasion was largely ineffectual, the effect it would have had on British civilian moral would have been devastating. Particularly if Churchill got up and gave the idiotic order for civilians to launch suicide attacks, as he suggested after the war. He even came up with a slogan for it 'At least you can take one with you!'.

Para troops where unreliable at best. Easily blown off course or scattered. Half there battle is landing any force capable of cohesive operation where it should be.

There record in ww2 was a mixed bag.

Plus without reinforced and suplies delivered.
They have days before they are broken. They cannot mount sustained fight minus support. Wrong wind can scatter them miles off course and hours from carefully planned or timed objectives

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas.

No, it's not. But answer me this. In a time of war, when the Battle of Britain is very fresh, there are radar stations up and down the coast, and a native intelligence network on the other side, do you honestly believe that Germany could:-

-Assemble the 9th Army and the appropriate paratroopers.
-Sail the 9th army across the Channel in barges over the course of half a day (because at top speed, that's what it would take) in full daylight (because doing it at night would either require enough artificial light to make it pointless or cause mass collisions and disjointment).
-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)
-Land both of these forces with enough precision to not have them scattered.
-Attack and cross half a dozen military facilities and obstacles

And do all this with nobody noticing?!

I maintain, if they do that? They're ninjas. Nothing else could do it.

 notprop wrote:
Handfull of pill boxes?

I could take you to farms where there are 1-2 in every field. How many do you suspect the stealth ninja Nazis can take down before Dad's army would wake up from their comedy japes to put some cold steel up 'em?

The other funny thing is how many ships and of what type you imagine Folkstone harbour would accommodate?

It's tiny and filled with sand. The Harbour wall has next to no unloading equipment, you just wouldn't land heavy equipment there. The first low tide would maroon any loaded ship of any size (assuming you could fit it adjacent to the pier, sorry harbour wall.

It really isn't feasible.

I draw your attention to Folkstone THEN as seen above. The outer harbor had, as you can see, much more heavy unloading equipment at the time, particularly large cranes (and was dredged clear of sand for the passenger steamers). While it is NOT suitable for unloading a whole invasion, what it was suitable for was their immediate needs, primarily getting armor on shore to support the push toward other harbors (notably Dover).

There were a handful on the Canal. Most of htem were around RAF Lympne:



Like this one. However, the air-station there did not have enough men to actually man the defenses in the event of a landing. They had less than 20 men most of the second half of 1940, and was entirely empty for several weeks during this period. A fact that RAF never bothered to inform the 1st London, manning the canal IIRC.

Outside of Axis & Allies, no one is successfully launching an invasion across the Channel in 1940. It's logistically and materially impossible.

D-Day was actually fairly close, and that was with naval and air superiority, and the full force of the Allied war machine behind it.

 Ketara wrote:
But answer me this. In a time of war, when the Battle of Britain is very fresh, there are radar stations up and down the coast,

Chain home was not a universal panacea, and had issues with low flying aircraft into 41. A simple trick that might have worked would have been to use a bombing raid to mask the paradrop. Assuming that chain home wasn't abandoned. Dowding was replaced right about this point, and German air supremacy in the south of England would have made chain home less useful.

 Ketara wrote:

-Sail the 9th army across the Channel in barges over the course of half a day (because at top speed, that's what it would take) in full daylight (because doing it at night would either require enough artificial light to make it pointless or cause mass collisions and disjointment).

I actually would see it in a heavy sea fog and night. The Germans actually had a rather novel system of determining range between two vehicles though would have worked just fine. (It was based on an optical illusion, four small lights in two groups. if it looked like you were seeing two lights, you were just right. One light, too far, four too close. They used it in all their convoy lights, so soldiers would be familiar with it even with minimal training.)

 Ketara wrote:

-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)

The paradrop I admit is the tough part, but weather reports for the period suggest that conditions were ideal, so there is that.

 Ketara wrote:

-Land both of these forces with enough precision to not have them scattered.

By sea, yes. By air... maybe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jhe90 wrote:

They have days before they are broken. They cannot mount sustained fight minus support. Wrong wind can scatter them miles off course and hours from carefully planned or timed objectives

Most of the drop sites were Day 1 objectives for the troops coming from the landing areas.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Chain home was not a universal panacea, and had issues with low flying aircraft into 41. A simple trick that might have worked would have been to use a bombing raid to mask the paradrop. Assuming that chain home wasn't abandoned. Dowding was replaced right about this point, and German air supremacy in the south of England would have made chain home less useful.

But German air supremacy didn't exist. And massing that number of aircraft would have met an equal number of RAF counterparts coming in your direction. Not to mention that when you're flying that many aircraft? You're going to register on radar. This isn't one, or two, or even ten aircraft, we're talking about air dropping thousands of soldiers, in hundreds of aircraft. And all it takes is the first RAF pilot saying, 'Cor, that's a lot of men with parachutes' radioing it down, and wham. Ground control know what's going on. Surprise lost before the paratroops can even gather and figure out which way they're going.

I actually would see it in a heavy sea fog and night. The Germans actually had a rather novel system of determining range between two vehicles though would have worked just fine. (It was based on an optical illusion, four small lights in two groups. if it looked like you were seeing two lights, you were just right. One light, too far, four too close. They used it in all their convoy lights, so soldiers would be familiar with it even with minimal training.)

The Germans tried a single amphibious landing exercise. It was a dismal, dismal failure. That one was in broad daylight under controlled circumstances. If we're talking about a foggy night, I don't even want to know how many would have gone astray and ended up somewhere off of Cornwall, or swept out to the Atlantic, or connecting with mines, or God only knows what else. Amphibious landings are challenging with troops who know exactly what they're doing in specialised landing craft. Soldiers who've never done it before in river barges being pulled by tugs on a foggy night going to a beach they don't know sounds like the recipe for the biggest clusterf**k in military history. A couple of night lights aren't going to compensate here.

 Ketara wrote:

-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)

The paradrop I admit is the tough part, but weather reports for the period suggest that conditions were ideal, so there is that.

Weather has nothing to do with it. My Grandad was one of the paratroopers who did the Normandy drop, and he's told me in great detail about what a nightmare it was even under ideal conditions. Night-time drops are even worse because everyone comes down over a spread out distance, and you have to spend a while blundering around trying to reunite with other unit members. He used to tell me how you were never sure if it was going to be a scared Frenchman, your squadmate, or a German soldier coming around the barn corner.

There are just so very. very many things that can go wrong with Sealion, that the idea that it could have been pulled off even with half a dozen handicaps ascribed to to the British seems incredible. Surprise, luck and chutzpah only get you so far!

 Ketara wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas.

No, it's not. But answer me this. In a time of war, when the Battle of Britain is very fresh, there are radar stations up and down the coast, and a native intelligence network on the other side, do you honestly believe that Germany could:-

-Assemble the 9th Army and the appropriate paratroopers.
-Sail the 9th army across the Channel in barges over the course of half a day (because at top speed, that's what it would take) in full daylight (because doing it at night would either require enough artificial light to make it pointless or cause mass collisions and disjointment).
-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)
-Land both of these forces with enough precision to not have them scattered.
-Attack and cross half a dozen military facilities and obstacles

And do all this with nobody noticing?!

I maintain, if they do that? They're ninjas. Nothing else could do it.

Well, the Allies pretty much did just that. It is far from impossible.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas.

No, it's not. But answer me this. In a time of war, when the Battle of Britain is very fresh, there are radar stations up and down the coast, and a native intelligence network on the other side, do you honestly believe that Germany could:-

-Assemble the 9th Army and the appropriate paratroopers.
-Sail the 9th army across the Channel in barges over the course of half a day (because at top speed, that's what it would take) in full daylight (because doing it at night would either require enough artificial light to make it pointless or cause mass collisions and disjointment).
-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)
-Land both of these forces with enough precision to not have them scattered.
-Attack and cross half a dozen military facilities and obstacles

And do all this with nobody noticing?!

I maintain, if they do that? They're ninjas. Nothing else could do it.

Well, the Allies pretty much did just that. It is far from impossible.

Sorry, did you just claim operation Overlord went off without any Germans noticing?

Because that's the point that's in dispute here, the idea that the Germans could do it all and take Britain by surprise. Not the idea of successful air drops/sea landings.

 Ketara wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Chain home was not a universal panacea, and had issues with low flying aircraft into 41. A simple trick that might have worked would have been to use a bombing raid to mask the paradrop. Assuming that chain home wasn't abandoned. Dowding was replaced right about this point, and German air supremacy in the south of England would have made chain home less useful.

But German air supremacy didn't exist. And massing that number of aircraft would have met an equal number of RAF counterparts coming in your direction. Not to mention that when you're flying that many aircraft? You're going to register on radar. This isn't one, or two, or even ten aircraft, we're talking about air dropping thousands of soldiers, in hundreds of aircraft. And all it takes is the first RAF pilot saying, 'Cor, that's a lot of men with parachutes' radioing it down, and wham. Ground control know what's going on. Surprise lost before the paratroops can even gather and figure out which way they're going.

Wasn't the whole point of this thread an alternate scenario where Germany never invaded the Soviet Union and thus could spend all the resources that went into preparing Barbarossa on Adlertag and Seelöwe instead so that they would win the Battle of Britain and gain air superiority? Of course, in real life German air superiority did not exist. That is why the whole invasion of Britain thing was called off in the first place!

 Ketara wrote:

I actually would see it in a heavy sea fog and night. The Germans actually had a rather novel system of determining range between two vehicles though would have worked just fine. (It was based on an optical illusion, four small lights in two groups. if it looked like you were seeing two lights, you were just right. One light, too far, four too close. They used it in all their convoy lights, so soldiers would be familiar with it even with minimal training.)

The Germans tried a single amphibious landing exercise. It was a dismal, dismal failure. That one was in broad daylight under controlled circumstances. If we're talking about a foggy night, I don't even want to know how many would have gone astray and ended up somewhere off of Cornwall, or swept out to the Atlantic, or connecting with mines, or God only knows what else. Amphibious landings are challenging with troops who know exactly what they're doing in specialised landing craft. Soldiers who've never done it before in river barges being pulled by tugs on a foggy night going to a beach they don't know sounds like the recipe for the biggest clusterf**k in military history. A couple of night lights aren't going to compensate here.

Agreed. The Allies could only pull off D-day because of their experience with naval landings and their specialised equipment. The Germans did not have those things. Of course, in the alternate scenario they could have developed that, but then the invasion would not be in 1940.

 Ketara wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas.

No, it's not. But answer me this. In a time of war, when the Battle of Britain is very fresh, there are radar stations up and down the coast, and a native intelligence network on the other side, do you honestly believe that Germany could:-

-Assemble the 9th Army and the appropriate paratroopers.
-Sail the 9th army across the Channel in barges over the course of half a day (because at top speed, that's what it would take) in full daylight (because doing it at night would either require enough artificial light to make it pointless or cause mass collisions and disjointment).
-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)
-Land both of these forces with enough precision to not have them scattered.
-Attack and cross half a dozen military facilities and obstacles

And do all this with nobody noticing?!

I maintain, if they do that? They're ninjas. Nothing else could do it.

Well, the Allies pretty much did just that. It is far from impossible.

Sorry, did you just claim operation Overlord went off without any Germans noticing?

Because that's the point that's in dispute here, the idea that the Germans could do it all and take Britain by surprise. Not the idea of successful air drops/sea landings.

Well, of course they noticed, but not in time to prevent the Allies from taking out coastal defenses and establishing an initial bridgehead. That is important. The Germans thought the invasion was going to be somewhere else, iirc. Didn't the Allies set up an entire invasion force of fake tanks etc. just to fool the Nazis?

 feeder wrote:
Outside of Axis & Allies, no one is successfully launching an invasion across the Channel in 1940. It's logistically and materially impossible.

Well, I did in Hearts of Iron III.
Seeing that Operation Seelöwe was doomed to fail, I used my supreme strategic intellect to let the German forces bypass England entirely and invade Ireland instead. Then I forced all Leprechauns to goosestep while singing the Horst Wessel Lied.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Wasn't the whole point of this thread an alternate scenario where Germany never invaded the Soviet Union and thus could spend all the resources that went into preparing Barbarossa on Adlertag and Seelöwe instead so that they would win the Battle of Britain and gain air superiority? Of course, in real life German air superiority did not exist. That is why the whole invasion of Britain thing was called off in the first place!

I'm not sure it is. The idea that you could somehow advance the timeline a year or two and 'gift' Germany with air superiority seems like a really bad exercise in 'what if' history to me, primarily because of what I mentioned before; namely context. If we assume that Germany is pouring all it's resources into aircraft and amphibious warfare, we have to assume the British will be aware of this, and pouring their own resources into alternative home defence projects. British aircraft production was actually higher than Germany's in 1940, because Germany wasn't on a full total war footing; it is hard to see Hitler ordering the level of domestic production instituted that was needed in order to gain enough aircraft to completely hammer the RAF out the sky.

Even if we do assume it happened, you then have to account for the possibility of the British blowing all coastal harbours and fortifying all beach landing zones, stockpiling torpedo craft there, covering them with mines and so on in order to render a cross-channel landing impossible. You can't just modify Barbarossa, and assume that all British actions and the geography would remain identical to what actually happened or was the case in 1940, because British priorities would be vastly different.

Well, of course they noticed, but not in time to prevent the Allies from taking out coastal defenses and establishing an initial bridgehead. That is important. The Germans thought the invasion was going to be somewhere else, iirc. Didn't the Allies setting up an entire invasion force of fake tanks etc. just to fool the Nazis?

The reason the Allies could establish a bridgehead is because they were so well equipped with amphibious landing craft and landing on so wide a front.

Regardless, the point that was in dispute was that BaronIveagh kept hypothesizing that the ill-equipped numerically inferior Germans could take a number of military positions completely by surprise; I was highlighting how unlikely that was to be the case. With barges, you've got half a day's notice from when they set out before they even reach the beach, which is plenty of time to twig and start preparing, and with a paratroop you have radar signals. Therefore it was unlikely (understating) that the Germans would be able to take all of these military points by surprise, because all of Britain would know they were coming about five hours before the first Germans set foot on British soil (in the case of naval landings). Indeed, considering the French intelligence being fed back, it is likely we would know it was happening a week beforehand, quite frankly.

 Vaktathi wrote:
WW2 battleships were amazingly, absurdly, resilient. The problem was that the battleships had construction and maintenance costs to match that resiliency, and that aircraft, mines, and submarines could overcome that resiliency at a far lower price point, and there's a reason that you can count on two hands the number of engagements that Battleships proper engaged in direct combat with other enemy fleet assets over like...50 years, and really only 3 engagements where the battleships acted as the primary combatants (Tsushima, Jutland, and Bismarck).

River Plate, Leyte Gulf, Mers el Kabir, Dakar, Casablanca, Surigao Straight...

 Ketara wrote:

I'm not sure it is.

It is, read my OP.

As I said, the basic premise is that the Germans have gained air superiority. This would rather mean there's no RAF pilot to notice those paratroopers.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
WW2 battleships were amazingly, absurdly, resilient. The problem was that the battleships had construction and maintenance costs to match that resiliency, and that aircraft, mines, and submarines could overcome that resiliency at a far lower price point, and there's a reason that you can count on two hands the number of engagements that Battleships proper engaged in direct combat with other enemy fleet assets over like...50 years, and really only 3 engagements where the battleships acted as the primary combatants (Tsushima, Jutland, and Bismarck).

River Plate, Leyte Gulf, Mers el Kabir, Dakar, Casablanca, Surigao Straight...

Note I said battleships as *the primary* combatants, Leyte Gulf and co. had battleships but gobs of aircraft carriers doing their thing were the core of the fleet, Mers el Kabir wasn't so much a battle as fish-in-a-barrel shelling of a moored flotilla. River plate/Montivideo was one battleship (or heavy cruiser/battlecruiser depending on one's definition) against a cruiser group that ended up scuttling itself so it's kinda hard to classify that one directly. At Casablanca, carrier launched aircraft again played a major, if not primary, role.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

With regards to taking guns, again, it's very easy to sabotage something like that. I suppose it is possible they could be taken by surprise, and the paratroopers could cross the canal by surprise, but that means essentially that Germany would have to invade Britain completely by surprise in the middle of a war. So they'd have to basically be ninjas.

By that logic, the Allies landed thousands of ninjas in France, on June 6, 1944.

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas. In fact, the element surprise was one of England's biggest concerns. The Germans had managed to take their enemies by surprise over and over in the war, not the least of which the invasion of France. Brooke wasn't entirely sold he could win with the forces and materials he had at hand, and it largely hung on how many tanks the Germans got ashore before the Navy could stop them by his estimate.

Personally, I think that the invasion would have been a mixed bag, with a lot of variables in play (how many channel facing gun positions were taken intact, how many of what made it on shore, expansion of German air support, etc etc).

But I think it would have broken Britain politically if the Germans were to hold on to their foothold for a month or two. Even if their invasion was largely ineffectual, the effect it would have had on British civilian moral would have been devastating. Particularly if Churchill got up and gave the idiotic order for civilians to launch suicide attacks, as he suggested after the war. He even came up with a slogan for it 'At least you can take one with you!'.

So your discussion is Operation Sealion at the time the Germans originally intended correct?
With what? The Germans had no appreciable transport assets. They were attempting to use river barges and other civilian shipping. Thats not how you transport an invasion force against a country that is fully mobilized.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
WW2 battleships were amazingly, absurdly, resilient. The problem was that the battleships had construction and maintenance costs to match that resiliency, and that aircraft, mines, and submarines could overcome that resiliency at a far lower price point, and there's a reason that you can count on two hands the number of engagements that Battleships proper engaged in direct combat with other enemy fleet assets over like...50 years, and really only 3 engagements where the battleships acted as the primary combatants (Tsushima, Jutland, and Bismarck).

River Plate, Leyte Gulf, Mers el Kabir, Dakar, Casablanca, Surigao Straight...

Don't forget Iron Bottom Sound.

 Ketara wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Achieving surprise in war is not magic, nor the realm of ninjas.

No, it's not. But answer me this. In a time of war, when the Battle of Britain is very fresh, there are radar stations up and down the coast, and a native intelligence network on the other side, do you honestly believe that Germany could:-

-Assemble the 9th Army and the appropriate paratroopers.
-Sail the 9th army across the Channel in barges over the course of half a day (because at top speed, that's what it would take) in full daylight (because doing it at night would either require enough artificial light to make it pointless or cause mass collisions and disjointment).
-Fly enough aircraft to drop a substantial paratrooper force (probably in daylight as well, because dropping paras at night would make it even more difficult to have them meet up)
-Land both of these forces with enough precision to not have them scattered.
-Attack and cross half a dozen military facilities and obstacles

And do all this with nobody noticing?!

I maintain, if they do that? They're ninjas. Nothing else could do it.

Well, the Allies pretty much did just that. It is far from impossible.

Sorry, did you just claim operation Overlord went off without any Germans noticing?

Because that's the point that's in dispute here, the idea that the Germans could do it all and take Britain by surprise. Not the idea of successful air drops/sea landings.

The scale of decoy operation for D Day was enormous. An entire fake army group, multiple nation mission, huge amounts of resources dedicated to confusion and deception. Also relying on Hitlers obsession and control issues. Pulling same trick on uk is not so easy.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

I'm not sure it is.

It is, read my OP.

As I said, the basic premise is that the Germans have gained air superiority. This would rather mean there's no RAF pilot to notice those paratroopers.

I'm afraid that if we're going to what if this scenario then, we're going to need a bit more context and detail. Simply saying 'what if the Germans had air superiority' raises more questions than it answers.

If we're just saying that every Luftwaffe pilot has a Baron von Richthofen week and shoots down 5 British planes for every loss of their own, that's the simplest way of doing this. In which case, it is possible to speculate on an Operation Sealion date in 1940, where Germany had temporary (and it would be temporary due to high levels of British aircraft production) air domination. In that scenario, Sea Lion being pulled off is still virtually impossible due to every other factor . Namely, the Royal Navy, the poor quality of the landing force, the unlikelihood of throwing that many men across the channel without French intelligence relaying it back giving advance warning, potential various British countermeasures making taking a port facility highly difficult to improbable, and/or rendering it useless after it has been taken. Too many factors are just working against it happening in 1940, with or without air superiority.

If we're assuming that we're a year on, then it becomes almost a pointless exercise, as you can't just say, 'Well, what if Germany had air domination but had it in June 1941?' Why? Because we'd have to ask why they had air superiority. What happened to the vast British aircraft production industry? Why can't they buy more from America? What circumstances changed in Germany to make them ramp up the production to the ridiculous extent required to gain that superiority, and what other knock on effects would that have had?

Meanwhile, if we're assuming we're a year on and Barbarossa didn't happen, we have to explore what else happened in that year. What priorities did the British have? Are they aware the Germans are planning invasion? If Germany is building proper amphibious invasion craft and trialling them and training troops on beaches over the channel, they'd be hard pressed not to know. And how does that change their priorities within that year? You most likely end up with all minor harbours being demolished, major ones fortified, potential beach landing zones covered in pillboxes, artillery positions set up and so forth. With their shipbuilding capacity as well, I would be strongly surprised if they didn't design and manufacture a new class of small, light and cheap torpedo gunboat to intercept landing craft and station them en masse up and down the coast. They'd do everything in their power to render a channel crossing impossible, and unlike Germany in Overlord, they wouldn't have their resources being sucked off to a separate, more gruelling front.

In this scenario again, even with a year's preparation and air superiority, I don't see the Germans successfully effecting a landing.

Overlord...Sea lion....two different animal