January 26th, 2008, 07:06 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: NEPA/Scranton(close enough)
Posts: 631
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Re: Operation Sealion Should Have Happened
I am basing this post on somewhat of a happy medium of the landings at Anzio and Normandy. For any chance of success the Germans would have to land about 250.000 troops in England within the first month of the operation.
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Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner
The initial wave was to take approxmately 96 hours to completely cross and another 72 to get ashore. That equates to ONE WEEK just to land the first wave! This puts the equivalent of just one weak infantry division ashore on each beach.
The one available parachute division was to land behind one of the beaches over a period of about 2 days (the Luftwaffe could only lift about half the division at a time).
With no, nada, none, zip, opposition the Germans could realistically expect to lose 30 to 50% of the landing barges just through beaching them.
The invasion force had little more than a motely collection of motor minesweepers, armed trawlers, and small gunboats for escort with virtually nothing bigger than a 3.7cm AA gun for armament. Many of the barges would have mounted 2 or 3.7cm AA guns. The majority of the crews operating the barges had little or no sailing experiance.
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Quote:
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The Royal Navy had 36 destroyers, and about 400 small craft committed to immediately countering an invasion crossing.
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Due to this fact it would have to be done in two trips. The Germans built about 700 troop transports throughout the course of the war. The most likely used by the Nazis would be the Marinefa:hrpraham Type D[1]. with a 200 troop capacity or 140 tons of supplies. The landings would have to be supported by the LW and KM. The LW would need at least no less than 5000 planes flying various support missions. The operation would require on initial landing 112.500 troops, 1000 pcs of artillery and about 500 tanks. To land this the Nazis would need no less than 2200 transports and 1000 other surface vessels to protect the convoy. To even consider any of this the Z-Plan would not only need to not be scrapped but multiplied by a factor of at least 5. Planes could be built for the operation in about 6 months, and troops allocated even faster. The problem comes in the form of the ships involved. The steel could be found for the transports, without allocating extra steel in about 2-2.5 months time, but building them is another story. For all additional ships Germany is screwed. The Z-Plan called for 13 BB’s, 4 CV’s, 15 “Pocket Battleships”, 23 CA’s , and 22 DD’s over a 7 year period. It is very questionable that Germany was capable of achieving even this. In this timeline we are not looking at Germany waiting 1-2 years to launch the operation but 3-4 DECADES. This is more than a “What If” It is an IMPOSSIBILITY. Period
NOTE:
I figured this all out in about a half hour so feel free to correct any errors, but please give me some leeway on the type of transports, I used the largest available for this quick analysis
[1] I could'nt figure out how to put the : above the a. Sorry
Mike
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"When war does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." -General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson
"The conqueror is always a lover of peace; he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."-Karl von Clausewitz
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