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[Sheb]

Culise, since you seen to know about the subject, how would a successful Sealion have influenced the North African war?

[Loud Whispers]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion Pretty much Germany's version of the D-Day landings at Normandy and the operations from there.

Except shitter. Disappointed they didn't try, it would've ended the war so much sooner. What if you go the Mythbusters approach though; what would it take for Sealion to work? How many flying tanks would the Germans have to conjure up from thin air?

[smjjames]

There is also one other factor that is being left out here, Americas involvement in the war.

[mainiac]

You can't feed a war effort on carrots, less so an island of 50 million people. A Britain without coal, oil, food and munitions is not one that can fight.

I dont disagree with you here I just dont see how it addresses the fact that the Germans didn't have remotely close to enough bombers to do that.

Air power can do a lot but not all airpower is made easy.  Sure German naval bombers could have done a lot... if they actually had any naval bombers.  Pearly Harbor and Taranto were impressive but they show what you can achieve with resources that the Germans were completely lacking in.

The "What if" here isn't "what if Germany had chosen targets differently".  It's "What if Germany had a huge additional arsenal of weapons".

[Sergarr]

This looks like a pretty competent analysis of why Sea Lion couldn't work.

Also, the Germans were starting to losing the air war before they switched to bombing cities. They were losing aircraft at a pretty serious pace, and the Brits were constructing new ones faster than they were shot down.

[Culise]

Sealion is kind of...oh, what's the term for it.  I can't recall..

Amphibious landing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion Pretty much Germany's version of the D-Day landings at Normandy and the operations from there.

Yes, but I was thinking of a quality judgment rather than a factual statement.  It was bloody, bloody stupid, but I had a neat pithy phrase for it that I completely forgot. For instance, Overlord was launched with specialized landing craft designed to put boots and treads on the sand as fast as possible.  The Germans at this point were so hard-up for amphibious capacity that they wanted to press Rhine river barges into service for the operation, or in other words, craft that were designed for constrained river operations and would have been so unseaworthy in open Channel waters that they would have capsized if you so much as blew on them - Home Fleet could have literally destroyed the invasion force by steaming right through it at flank speed and letting them overturn in its wake.  Sea Lion would start with the loss of over half the first wave to the Channel waters, with the landing being made piecemeal by disorganized forces against concentrated defenses just where the British wanted them to be, and any subsequent attempt would have been ripped to pieces.  About the best you can say that would have happened is that the Germans would have done quite a bit of damage to Home Fleet as it sallied, but would have lost much of the committed Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe in the desperate fighting in the process.

Culise, since you seen to know about the subject, how would a successful Sealion have influenced the North African war?

Heh, not as much as most may think; I'm basically researching on the fly.  To a degree, it depends on which part is successful - the landings (Sea Lion proper) or the follow-up conquest of the Isles.  If the Home Isles have already fallen by 1941, North Africa becomes a critical pivot as far as morale is concerned in order to compensate for such a severe drubbing, and it's not like the reinforcements have anywhere else to go (except maybe Singapore or Port Moresby).  If the Home Isles are still fighting hard, Operation Compass might never happen as reinforcements slated for Egypt instead go straight to (or never leave - the British actually sent quite a few tanks from home to Egypt) the Home Isles, or else it might occur with more limited aims (i.e., drive the Italians out of Egypt, but not to press as far as Tobruk).  They also wouldn't be stripped for the operations in Greece, and without the complete collapse of Italian positions, Rommel never arrives with the Africa Corps.  Indeed, even if Operation Compass went off exactly as historical, German manpower commitments to the invasion of Britain might also block reinforcement of the Italians.  This is all in the near-term, mind you; extrapolating further is a bit trickier. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion Pretty much Germany's version of the D-Day landings at Normandy and the operations from there.

Except shitter. Disappointed they didn't try, it would've ended the war so much sooner. What if you go the Mythbusters approach though; what would it take for Sealion to work? How many flying tanks would the Germans have to conjure up from thin air?

All of them. Let's see, they'd need a Kriegsmarine strong enough to fight off the Home Fleet and still maintain enough capability for massive shore bombardment to crack pillboxes and rip apart the Admiralty scaffolding, not to mention the amphibious assault capabilities of something ranking above that of a lead elephant.  They'd need a Luftwaffe capable of outfighting the British over their own soil, which probably means the British need to lose the Home Chain and the Battle of the Beams, as well as many more fighter craft.  They'd need to be able to put enough boots on the ground to secure a beachhead against the coastal crust defenses, not to mention a mobile response force that should have almost 500 tanks (Churchill's numbers, not Cranbourne's).  The planned landing site for Sea Lion included a marsh that was already partially flooded intentionally to stymie inland advances, and could have been flooded even further should it ever materialize.  With the British already dismantling ports and piers in the south, the Germans would also need their own equivalent to the Mulberry Harbors.  Finally, I'd throw in some specialized tanks akin to Hobart's Funnies for anti-mine and amphibious capabilities.  The problem is a lot of the Allied planning that went into D-Day was predicated on the tremendous failures at Dieppe.  Just as you yourself say, Sea Lion is like an even more incompetent Dieppe, and unlike the Allies, Germany doesn't have the production capacity to do it twice, especially when (unlike the Allies) they're going whole-hog the first time.  So, basically, all the goodies of 1944 Allies, their own pocket America-equivalent production-wise, as well as those four years of experience granted as precog.  That's what they'd need. ^_^

[Sergarr]

From the article I linked: "In a decision that is difficult to understand, given that there was no heavy equipment for them to pull, the Germans decided to include over 4,000 horses in the first wave."

I dunno how to comment on that.

[Culise]

From the article I linked: "In a decision that is difficult to understand, given that there was no heavy equipment for them to pull, the Germans decided to include over 4,000 horses in the first wave."

I dunno how to comment on that.

At least they'll still have fresh meat once the Home Fleet cuts them off from resupply. ^_^

[mainiac]

What if Sealion had been tried and failed?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Spoiler: All Russian (r)aid trucks should look like this (click to show/hide)

[Guardian G.I.]

Spoiler: All Russian (r)aid trucks should look like this (click to show/hide)

1. I think it belongs to the European Politics Megathread.
2. It's not a Russian truck.

[DJ]

What if the French fleet was not destroyed but instead captured by Germany? Could they have gained naval superiority?

[smjjames]

More context from the same article that sergarr linked:

The engineers were nothing if not enthusiastic. They built rafts from pontoons, and were undismayed when half of these rafts sank while in harbour. Attempts to provide these rafts with power failed, because they broke up under the strain. Nonetheless, the Wehrmacht announced that these rafts would be towed behind the barges being towed by the tugs, and that the horses would thus be transported across the Channel on these rafts, saving the difficulties of loading the horses into the barges. One wonders what the horses would have made of this concept.

Why not put the horses ON barges? lol

Honestly though, wouldn't have been easier to just steal british horses once they got onshore if they needed horses? I know there could be the language barrier since the horses wouldn't understand the commands, but that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Whole French fleet falling in German hands...

Let me think...

France 01 January 1940:
IN SERVICE: 7 battleships, 1 fleet aircraft carrier, 1 seaplane tender, 7 heavy cruisers, 10 light cruisers, 1 training cruiser, 12 auxiliary cruisers, 58 destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, 77 submarines, 9 sloops, 15 auxiliary sloops, 32 fast anti-submarine ships (corvettes), 11 submarine chasers,
+

GERMANY 01 January 1940
N SERVICE: 2 battleships-predreadnoughts, 2 battlecruisers, 5 seaplane tenders, 3 catapult vessels, 4 heavy cruisers, 6 light cruisers, 3 auxiliary cruisers, 22 destroyers, 21 torpedo boats, 55 submarines, 7 corvettes, 4 patrol ships, 140 auxiliary patrol vessels, 30 auxiliary submarine chasers,

against:
UNITED KINGDOM 01 January 1940
IN SERVICE: 11 battleships, 3 battlecruisers, 3 monitors, 4 fleet aircraft carriers, 2 light aircraft carriers, 2 seaplane tenders, 13 heavy cruisers, 43 light cruisers, 1 cruiser-minelayer, 41 auxiliary cruisers, 18 destroyer leaders, 160 destroyers, 60 submarines, 34 sloops, 10 patrol ships (corvettes),

________
So French fleet would be addition to German fleet but trained sailors... You need not only French giving all their vessels intact , but also fighting on German side...

Furthemore 5 of 7 French battleships were modest, 25 000t displacement, 20 knots, WW1-era vessels.

Nice collection of French cruisers would be a game changer, not for Sealion but for raiding commercial raiding

Same goes for French submarines

[Sergarr]

More context from the same article that sergarr linked:

The engineers were nothing if not enthusiastic. They built rafts from pontoons, and were undismayed when half of these rafts sank while in harbour. Attempts to provide these rafts with power failed, because they broke up under the strain. Nonetheless, the Wehrmacht announced that these rafts would be towed behind the barges being towed by the tugs, and that the horses would thus be transported across the Channel on these rafts, saving the difficulties of loading the horses into the barges. One wonders what the horses would have made of this concept.

Why not put the horses ON barges? lol

Honestly though, wouldn't have been easier to just steal british horses once they got onshore if they needed horses? I know there could be the language barrier since the horses wouldn't understand the commands, but that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem.

No, you see, the Nazis clearly believed that their horses were the True Aryan Horses® and thus obviously superior to the low-class British breeds.

Obviously.


Also, UR, France would never give their military fleet, nor their sailors, to the Germany. It was directly mentioned in the peace treaty, and the France has said that if Germans tried to capture the ships by force, they would sink all of them.