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Battle of Britain

Discussion in 'World War 2' started by E. Rommel phpbb3, May 7, 2005.

  1. E. Rommel phpbb3

    E. Rommel phpbb3 New Member

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    If Hitler had done this he would have had a better chance i think. Send the surface navy to the channel and thatd draw out the BRitish navy. Next send in the U-boats and Luftwaffe. After taht send in the LC to invade britian.

    What is your idea of what Hitler should have done or suggestions to improve my idea
     
  2. Roel

    Roel New Member

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    The British navy was vastly superior to the German navy; the U-Boot arm hadn't become quite as developed as in later war years at the time of the Battle of Britain. Meanwhile whatever you do inside the Channel will be under the cover of land-based British aircraft. I think a battle such as you describe would have led to more than the defeat of "just" the Luftwaffe, but the Kriegsmarine as well.
     
  3. E. Rommel phpbb3

    E. Rommel phpbb3 New Member

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    I see what you mean and I know that the British navy was superior but even thought the u-boats were few they could have blown up quite a few ships. The Luftwaffe would bomb the radar stations and air fields before the attack too. The LC would more than likely make it. Britians army was pitifully small then too
     
  4. GP

    GP New Member

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    Maybe or maybe not. If they had continued to attack the airfields and not London they would have had fewer fighters to contend with. This was the crux of the battle.
     
  5. E. Rommel phpbb3

    E. Rommel phpbb3 New Member

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    I agree that is what i was thinking too the bombing of London was a waste. The germans didn't go for air fiewlds they went for industrial areas like London
     
  6. canambridge

    canambridge Member

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    Not a bad start, but I don't think the Kreigsmarine, especially the surface units, would have been big enough or lasted long enough to make any difference.

    I would say first of all the Germans never should have fought the Battle of Britain. All those resources should have been diverted to the Med starting in July 1940, with a goal of removing the British by May 1941.

    Another alterantive that has been proposed is a "come as you are" invasion in early June 1940. go on the defensive against the French and use the paratroopers, LW and a small number of other ground forces to hit Britain on the heels on Dunkirk.

    If there was to an aerial battle over Britain in the summer of 1940, the Germans should have concentrated on knocking out the Home Chain radar system, the Fighter Command Sector HQs and the forward fighter bases, ignoring all other targets that they really couldn't attack effectively anyway. An invasion could have been risked once the RAF pulled back from Me-109 range. I think it would have ended in a German disaster far bigger than the defeat suffered in the actual BoB.
     
  7. Simonr1978

    Simonr1978 New Member

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    What is your idea of what Hitler should have done or suggestions to improve my idea

    Yeah, your best bet is don't bother :lol: , but for a serious alternative go to the end of my post.

    Send the surface navy to the channel and thatd draw out the BRitish navy.

    Bad idea, after Norway the German Navy was in proportionately worse shape compared to the Royal Navy than before, despite suffering roughly equal losses, a slugging match with the surface fleets of both Navies would likely end in victory for the Royal Navy, and annihilation for the Germans.

    Next send in the U-boats and Luftwaffe.

    The English/French channel is pretty shallow, bad U-boat territory, if you were going to use U-boats why not send them in with the surface fleet? At least try to even the odds, even then though you're still probably going to lose a lot of U-boats, but at least you might cost the British an extra capital ship or two.

    After taht send in the LC to invade britian.

    What landing craft? There aren't any! You have flat bottomed barges and an army largely dependant on horse drawn transport trying to invade a country whose south eastern coast is largely cliffs (Especially the usable ports)! Horses do not swim well (Well, they do normally but strap an 88mm cannon to one and chuck it in the Channel even in summer and trust me, it'll sink!). There is also little defence for your "Landing Craft" because you'll have lost most of your Navy against a still functioning Royal Navy by this point. The barges would sink with anything like a near-miss or a destroyer's wake swamping them, the Royal Navy wouldn't even have to shoot!

    You could cause the home fleet some casualties that it would take a while to replace with your alternative invasion, but apart from that, you'd lose a lot of German soldiers and sailors

    Forget the idea that Sealion could have been a German D-Day, they had no LCIs, no LCTs, there was no "Transport Plan" to cripple British logistics before invasion and no serious attempt at Strategic bombing.

    What would I suggest as an alternative?

    Two realistic alternatives, use the Luftwaffe and U-boats together to blockade Britain, or invade the Republic of Ireland (It's a Neutral, but Germany didn't historically have a huge problem with violating Neutrality). This would enable a Blitzkreig to capture several useful ports for U-boats, put the Midlands and North Western ports within Stuka range and give Germany the very useful shipyards of Belfast since such an attack would be a) Unexpected and b) have every chance of success as Eire and Ulster would in all likelihood fall before Britain could mount an effective counter-attack.
     
  8. Notmi

    Notmi New Member

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    Hmm, German surface fleet during BoB:

    Capital ships: Scharnhorst & Gneisenau and Schlesien & Schleswig-Holstein

    Cruisers: Emden, Köln, Leipzig, Nürnberg, Hipper, Admiral Scheer, Deutschland / Lutzow.
    Prinz Eugen comissioning 1st August 1940.

    Destroyers: Z.4 Richard Beitzen, Z.5 Paul Jocobi, Z.6 Theodor Riedel, Z.7 Hermann Schoemann, Z.8 Bruno Heinemann, Z.10 Hans Lody, Z.14 Friedrich Ihn, Z.15 Erich Steinbrinck, Z.16 Friedrich Eckoldt, Z.20 Karl Galster.
    Z.23 comissioning Sep.15/40 and Z.24 comissioning Oct.26/40

    Also smaller TBD's, TB's etc.

    4 capital ships, 2 of them slow pre-dreadnoughts. 7 Cruisers and 10 Destroyers and smaller boats.

    Not really intimidating force, atleast when comparing RN. Besides, some of those ships were under repair during BoB.
    RN had 14 capital ships, few CV's and dozens of cruisers and destroyers, ofcourse not all available.

    Using submarines with other fleet: This was really not good option, U-boats couldn't keep up with other fleet at surface. Underwater they were even slower. You need real fleet submarines to keep up with surface fleet. And most fleet submarines were really disappointing. And coordinating submarine and surfacefleet actions is quite hard. A little sidenote: Try googling Battle of May island :cool:
    And like already pointed out, shallow and confined waters aren't really good submarinewaters, atleast for bigger boats.

    I think sending KM to english channel would have been really fortune for GB. :cool:
     
  9. PMN1

    PMN1 recruit

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    What if the Luftwaffe had more units like Erprobungsgruppe 210, trained to make fast low level raids with their Bf110's and used the full force on the radar stations - IIRC they did quite well on the raids they did carry out.

    Would the Germans have been in a psoition to make 'Commando' raids on the radar stations.
     
  10. Simonr1978

    Simonr1978 New Member

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    What would your thoughts be on a Irish-Sealion PMN1?
     
  11. Simonr1978

    Simonr1978 New Member

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    Using submarines with other fleet: This was really not good option, U-boats couldn't keep up with other fleet at surface.

    True but this would be no Channel Dash, they wouldn't have to keep up with the surface fleet particularly, just guard its flanks whilst it established an invasion corridor, I'm assuming here that the commitment of the surface fleet was either intended to draw out the Home Fleet (In which case why not have the U-boats as an Ambush force?) or to establish a corridor for the invading barges to use, in which case they have nothing to keep up with since the corridor is going nowhere, and again, why not add the maximum weight to the offensive (Concentration of effort around the decisive point), if nothing else it ups the ante by adding despartely needed firepower to corridor.

    In a nutshell; If you're going to gamble your surface navy, why not the subs as well?
     
  12. canambridge

    canambridge Member

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    yes, attacking the radar stations would have been a better strategy than what they actually did. I'm not familiar with Egruppe 210 but it sounds good. The Germans could have used paratroopers as commandoes, but the problem would have been with extraction.
     
  13. Charley

    Charley New Member

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    Given the problems the German invasion barges would have had just crossing 20 miles of channel, I can't see how they could have managed the much longer crossing to Ireland.
     
  14. Roel

    Roel New Member

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    It failed in 1690, why would it work in 1940? In both cases England was at war with the greatest power on the continent, yet pretty much controlled the seas.
     
  15. Notmi

    Notmi New Member

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    Well, considering that Big Boys from Scapa won't come without umphteens of DD escorts, I can't see how submarines can be very successful against surface fleet. Sure some success will come but I doubt it is enough.

    I agree your point here. Thought we shouldn't think that during WW2 -time submarines could be decive force against escorted surface force.
     
  16. PMN1

    PMN1 recruit

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    Lots of Germans finding themselves swimming 300 - 600ft....

    ....straight down.

    :smok:
     
  17. Ebar

    Ebar New Member

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    Irish Sealion

    Is Irish sealion do-able

    Short answer: No

    Long answer: Basically you take all of the problems with a UK sealion and multiply them by at least ten.

    Work through the problems

    1 Your out of Bf109 range. Even a handful of Hurricanes will have a field day against unsupported German bombers
    2 Much much longer sea crossing. Far higher chance of interception by RN units.
    3 Irish infrastructure at the time is poor (hell it's not even great now). Your invasion troops are likely to find themselves struggling to get out of the beachhead area.
    4 The Irish army (yes they did have one) can't take the Germans in a fight but they won't try. They have eight hundred years experience of making a nuisance of themselves against larger opponents. :D Cue lot of blown up bridges and whatnot while the government in Dublin screams to high heaven for British aid.
    5 Once it's all gone pear shaped for the Germans and the newsreels have captured for posterity pictures of lines of German POWs being led away by the Irish Home Guard Ireland will be firmly in the allied camp. Irish west coast ports now become available to the RN.
     
  18. Simonr1978

    Simonr1978 New Member

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    Is Irish sealion do-able

    Short answer: No


    I have to admit I think that too, but I think it has a number of potential advantages against a UK Sealion.

    1 Your out of Bf109 range. Even a handful of Hurricanes will have a field day against unsupported German bombers

    True but I believe a handful of Hurricanes was more than the Irish airforce possessed in summer 1940, I believe their most modern warplane was a single interned Fairey Battle!

    2 Much much longer sea crossing. Far higher chance of interception by RN units.

    True, I had somehow overlooked that :oops: , but would the RN have gone for it assuming it wasn't just a decoy invasion to draw them away from the mainland? Admittedly Allied intelligence was fairly good even then, they would have a fair idea of how many German ships there were and figured it must be the all-out effort, then gone in and destroyed it.

    3,4 & 5...

    OK, OK bad plan!!! :D :lol: :D

    Thought we shouldn't think that during WW2 -time submarines could be decive force against escorted surface force.

    True, but as I think you acknowledge, I wasn't suggesting that they would be decisive, just that if you're going to go all-out you might as well do it completely. Especially as in this case any timidity on the part of the aggressors would be likely to be decisive in itself - if Germany was going to go for Sealion it would have to commit every available Naval resource to it to stand a chance of being successful.
     
  19. PMN1

    PMN1 recruit

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    They could land at Blackpool - perfect beaches for an invasion according to the Soviets.

    :smok: :D :D
     
  20. Ebar

    Ebar New Member

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    I've read a lot of peoples takes on successful Sealion and none of them have ever looked particulaly realistic. The best I ever came across saw the German invasion failling but Britain getting badly bashed up in the process. Any that forsee German victory tend to rely on apsolutely everthing going right. The bottom line is no matter how bad a slapping the Army and the RAF get there is the problem of the RN. In 1940 the British have more Battleships than the Germans have destroyers.

    The Germans best hope is if the RAF looses the BoB the Churchill government falls. It seems likely that a Halifax Government would seek to come to terms thus bringing peace in the west.
     

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