Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: JWE

Nope, couldn’t happen.

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ORIGINAL: Dixie

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ORIGINAL: timtom

There was a debate here in the UK a couple of years back after three RUSI scholars presented the heretical view that the BoB wasn't decided by the RAF alone. Tory press - or its readers rather - reacted in predictable fashion, fx comments in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1527068/Battle-of-Britain-was-won-at-sea.-Discuss.html

After the dust settled, the RUSI lot restates their case:

I remember that, being on an RAF squadron the result was, predictably, total indifference

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The Battle of Britain was won by the RAF, but it was the Royal Navy that saved us from an invasion. The entire point of the BoB was to defeat the RAF so that they would be unable to protect the Royal Navy when they went into battle. If the Royal Navy hadn't been capable of protecting us then the BoB wouldn't have been needed and Ze Germans would probably have come anyway.

Artwork graciously provided by Dixie

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ORIGINAL: JWE

The fly in the ointment, Hans, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the buttocks, and the booger in the woodpile, is that the gate don’t open on the garden of Eden. It just opens on yet another garden maze.

Ok, the RAF is defeated. So? Ok, the Germans can actually make it across the channel and land. So?

RAF had sanctuaries where they could re-org and re-build. And they would have come, and come, and come. Those men would have willingly sacrificed their lives to kill and kill. Likewise the RN; those stolid, silent, accepting, self-sacrificing men from Devon and the Midlands. Kill, kill and kill again, for Home and Hearth Strike!!

Sealion didn’t have a freakin prayer. If the Nazi pukes actually landed, it would have become a nice POW camp.

Artwork graciously provided by Dixie

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ORIGINAL: wwengr

In Norway, the Kriegsmarine lost 1 Heavy Cruiser, 1 Light Cruiser, 10 Destroyers, and 6 U-boats in the Naval Campaign to land forces in Norway. Many other ships were damaged.

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ORIGINAL: Japan

Also, would the RN been a factor, if German Bombers would dealt with it by portstrikes after dealing with the RAF..
They had bomber and escort range to Scapa Flow from Norway, so whole UK was within Bomber range,
Aiganst a prepared UK this would never worked, but aftert the AIR battle of Britain was done and the RAF was destroyed they planned to sink the fleet in its ports... The surviving ships and the mediteranien fleet they planned to hold back by using massive amounts of Bombers based in France.

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Well for the ones interested in the Crete Operation, the Germans planned to move in 30 000 men by air over a period of a few days.

Could they moved 60 000 to UK over a period of lets say 14 days if they had total Air Suprimecy ?

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ORIGINAL: JWE
[...]
RAF had sanctuaries where they could re-org and re-build. And they would have come, and come, and come. Those men would have willingly sacrificed their lives to kill and kill. Likewise the RN; those stolid, silent, accepting, self-sacrificing men from Devon and the Midlands. Kill, kill and kill again, for Home and Hearth Strike!!
[...]

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Stalin's intent was to return the Soviet Union to Imperial Russia's pre-1914 borders and then to gain as much additional territory as possible, to activate Russia's strategy of Deep Battle, fought on the territory of the enemy

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ORIGINAL: Kingfisher

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ORIGINAL: wwengr

In Norway, the Kriegsmarine lost 1 Heavy Cruiser, 1 Light Cruiser, 10 Destroyers, and 6 U-boats in the Naval Campaign to land forces in Norway. Many other ships were damaged.

2 Light Cruisers actually. Koingsberg capsized at Bergen as a result of a Skua strike, and her sister Karlsruhe was sunk by HMS Truant the next day as she was returning home.

Yamato, IMO the best looking Battleship.

"Hey, a packet of googly eyes! I'm so taking these." Hank Venture

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ORIGINAL: Ambassador

Remembering the past doesn't force one not to think of what could have but has not happened - the far-right party under Degrelle failed to access power in Belgium in the pre-war years, that's a fact, but it doesn't distract that it could have happened if the other parties had not united behind Van Zeeland.  Otherwise, remembering the past without thinking of the alternatives serves no purpose - it's that thinking which helps improve the present, not the remembrances - otherwise, we wouldn't fear our current-day extremists.
Your insinuation that I'm (or others are) basing my (their) thinking solely on movies is insulting, by the way.  But personal attacks are the sign of lack of arguments usually, so I won't complain.

The question of the discussion can be summed up as : could it have happened, and if so with what kind of circumstances.  Your answer is : it did not happen, so it could never have happened.  Quite near-sighted an answer...  and I wonder why you play WitP if history is bound to be always happen the same.
Besides, the OP himself posits as condition on an attempted Sealion that the RAF had to be wiped during BoB.

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ORIGINAL: Iridium

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ORIGINAL: Kingfisher

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ORIGINAL: wwengr

In Norway, the Kriegsmarine lost 1 Heavy Cruiser, 1 Light Cruiser, 10 Destroyers, and 6 U-boats in the Naval Campaign to land forces in Norway. Many other ships were damaged.

2 Light Cruisers actually. Koingsberg capsized at Bergen as a result of a Skua strike, and her sister Karlsruhe was sunk by HMS Truant the next day as she was returning home.

Incorrect, Blucher was eaten alive by 28cm guns at almost point blank range and then hit with an odd ground based torpedo launcher. It did capsize though.

CA Sinks at Oslo

It's been said before but the Hipper class always seemed like a lot of ship for not much in capabilities when compared to similar sized vessels. Course they can only be compared fairly to say, Takao etc.

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ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

If you are upset by what I have said then I am sorry, but I stand by what I have proposed, because it is what I believe, after considerable thought on these subjects. I thought that the whole purpose of these discussions was to explore what was feasible and what is not.

wrong quote

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ORIGINAL: turkey

This is an iteresting thread, with much discussion of the impact of the RN in a theoretical Nazi attack on the UK. Had the Nazi's achived air superiority over the UK, even then I'm not sure that they would have stopped the RN, after all they couldn't stop the RN (and many other civilian craft) evacuating 338,000 (200,000 British the rest French) allied troops from under the Luftwaffe air umberella at Dunkirk back to the UK. If the RN would commit to rescuing the army (not normally high on the RN list of priorities) I suspect they would have committed more seriously to the defense of their beloved bases on the south coast. Also even with only light weapons 338,000 men is a considerable force, now cornered and fighting for their homes. Would this have been suicide for the RN? I suggest not - Dunkirk wasn't and I suspect Sealion would have been a killing field for the RN which at the time in the area had 9 battleships to 3 Nazi (4 if you include Tirpitz, ready for war duty Sept 41), 3 RN carriers, about 35 RN cruisers to 7 and 90 plus destroyers to 22.

Also worth mentioning the Comonwealth and Empire troops that answered the call to Britain from as early as 1939 and would have been available to fight an invasion as very few of these were deployed to defend France (i think 1 Brigade of the Candian 1st Division deployed to the continent, but was immediately recalled to the UK). Also worth mentioning the geography of the southern UK, totally unsuited to tanks and Blitzkreig (un;like northern France and the LOW Countires) with several east-west lines of hills, the most southerly with steep south facing slopes, extensively wooded and only narrow lanes with high banks which would have made widespread break out from south coast beach heads tricky except on few well defined and therefore defended routes. Lastly these hills were fortified by the GHQ Defensive line of bunkers and gun emplacements running from Bristol in the west to a point SE of London and north, running to the east of London to the coast near Norwich in the north. Consiting of concrete gun emplacements (mostly anti tank) and infantry pill boxes with preponderance of light (Bren) and medium (Vickers .303 water cooled for sustained fire) machine guns and suported by extensive infantry field works, minefields, anti tank obstacles, including the canals and river that lace southern England it would have been a hard job for the Wehrmacht. But the simple fact is that the Luftwaffe couldn't acheive superiority over even the most southern reaches of the UK and this was due mostly to the limitations of their equipement, short range of Me 109 fighters, ineffectiveness of long range Me110 fighters and lack of heavy bombers, and by the unanticipated effect of the UK radar defences.

I agree the Hitler factor did effect the Battle of Britain in favour of the RAF (switch to bombing London) but as the RAF started bombing German cities, politcally, could he do anything else? And on the Hitler Effect, even had the south coast airfields been destroyed, the Me109 didn have the range to escort bombers beyond London (and only just to London with IIRC max 5 minutes over target) so it would have been prohibitively expensive (and almost certainly ineffective) to try and suppress the RAF on the midland airfields so the RAF would still have been able to fly LRCAP over the southern airfields and bridgeheads bomb the bridge heads, even had they lost the Battle of Britain.

So, the Wehrmacht battles its way ashore at the cost of many casualities, many many landing barges and transports sunk along with most of the combat ships sent to support them, plus masive Luftwaffe casualities. Would they have any way to maintain supply to the beaches? I suspect not. The "issue" of the RN is still not decided, neither have the RAF been prevented from flying from midland airfields to interdict resupply by air. All in all I suspect if the Wehrmacht High Command thought it was a bad idea, then it was. Lets face it, they didn't lack "morale fibre" they launched Barbarossa June 41 when a less corrageous bunch of people might of taken the softer option of Sealion.

On D-Day the allies put ashore 160,000 men, (6 or 7?) Inf Div, 3 Airborne Div and 3 Armoured brigades plus the 79th Arm Div (Hobarts Funnies). The allies used 1,213 warships, 4,126 purpose built landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. To supply them they had PLUTO and the 2 Mulberry harbours plus (massive) merchant shipping. Facing them they had (at first) 4 inf divisions, (so not far off what the British could have mustered in 1940/41) with 1 Inf Div in reserve and 1 Armoured Div at Caen (which was not deployed until too late (Hitler effect)). The Germans had no armor in the Sealion assault waves and armour was deemed crucial to the D-Day success and more importantly they had nothing we would recognise as assault landing craft, let alone the specialist fire support vessels or naval bombabrdment capacity that the allies could bring to bear in Normandy.

I would be up for playing the UK in a game which reflected these factors in a post Dunkirk scenario. Bring it on.

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ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

The RAF could never have been destroyed, if loses were becoming critical, squadrons would have been withdrawn to bases North of London. German un-escorted bomber attacks in daylight could not succeed and night bombing would do no major damage to tactical targets. During the BoB the Germans tried one attack from Norway expecting that there could be no RAF fighters in the North, they were wrong, they didn't attempt it again. The Bf 110 failed as long range fighter escort, so no German fighter escort available North of London, until invasion captures airfields in England. Therefore, the RAF cannot be defeated, result - no airfields no invasion, no invasion no airfields. Checkmate.

Although airpower became king later in the war, especially in the Pacific, this was not the case in 1940 Europe. The plain hard evidence is that the Luftwaffe, whatever they achieved later, could not stop the RN operating in the English Channel in the summer of 1940. The fact is, that nearly 350,000 men were brought across this water, in everything
from DDs to rowboats and, despite inflicting loses, the Germans could not stop them completing that mission. Not assessment, not assumption, not maybe. It's a fact.

Artwork graciously provided by Dixie

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ORIGINAL: String


How does the fact that Blücher was sunk in the Oslo fjord make the fact that Köningsberg was sunk at Bergen incorrect?

Yamato, IMO the best looking Battleship.

"Hey, a packet of googly eyes! I'm so taking these." Hank Venture

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ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

My tuppence worth for what its worth

Could the Luftwaffe have forced figther command out of south of England - YES
Could the Luftwaffe have destroyed the RAF - NO (Unless Dowding makes a catastrophic error)
Could they have landed 2 - 3 Divs (minus heavy equipment) and a couple of Para Divs in SE England - MAYBE IF THEY GOT LUCKY AND ACHIEVED SUPRISE
Could they have kept them supplied and landed heavy equipment in face of RN and RAF retaliation - ALMOST NO CHANCE IMO BUT OTHERS MAY DISAGREE
Did they have the shipping to sustain the supplies even if they managed to keep some afloat - NO

The British Deployments below the Thames in Summer of 40 had major ports covered by 3rd, 4th and 50th Divs (being brought up to strength quickly - 3rd was in good shape the others less so but they were in defence mode in and around major ports almost no mobility other than by foot but they were their and dug in)

1st London and 2 or 3 other Territorial Divs were on the coast as well in less critical areas as they had not been in Frnace they had some heavy equipment left - not TOE and obsolete - hated Hotckiss MG's rather than Brens but still MG's, 18 Pounders rather than 25 Pounders but still Arty, very few AT Guns but its unlikely they will be facing armour, 3" AA Guns rather than modern 3.7" but still AA guns - the British Army may have been denuded of MODERN equipment but it was not defenceless.

In reserve below the Thames in Corps reserve the rebuilding 1st Armoured (some tanks and A/C not many even in July 40) and the Australian Bde Gp and NZ Bde Group neither of which were in France

North of the Thames - 1st Can Div was concentrated and about 3 or 4 other Divs in various states of rebuilding and recovery

Artwork graciously provided by Dixie