This is posssible if they had started with the plan in 1933. But wouldnt this have encountered the same problem that the German Navy in WW1 had? What I mean is that if Germany started to build a huge invasion fleet the UK would have built a larger Invasion destruction fleet. While Germany was perhaps the master of the Blitzkreig the UK was in the 1930’s still the master of the North Sea and Channel.
The other issue is that had they started building what was obviously an invasion fleet aimed at the UK in the learly 1930s (and there really is nothing else they could do with one) there is no way on earth appeasement would have gone forward as it did in reality. Germany was a military pygmy at the time, and would have been stopped very easily.
Amphibious assault operations are one of the most complex in warfare requiring years of experience in order for success. That’s why countries like the U.S., U.K., France, and Russia have separate Marines or Naval Infantry.
Germany had nothing on the order of such, and no experience in seaborne landings. Good luck at “Operation Sealion.”
G’day,
pdf27 rightly pointed out the limitations on German industry, so when debating ‘what if’ scenarios this factor has to be taken into consideration.
Germany went to war in 1939, ill prepared, with a civilian economy and pretty much peace time industrial footing. Germany also suffered a dearth of strategic natural resources, along with a logistic system that would struggle throughout the war.
In military terms, as I said on my previous post, the only way Germany could successfully take Britain is by acheiving air superiority, and frankly the Luftwaffe was too small to acheive this and lacked fighter numbers to swamp the defenders.
To have the necessary force to swamp the RAF, the Luftwaffe could only be expanded to such a size with massive changes to the German war industry.
Regards to all
Digger.
Exactly, people love to celebrate the German expertise and their “sexy” panzers which were often top notch machines. But they also conveniently forget that for every picture of Tiger 1 or a Panther, there are dozens of horse-drawn carts and broken down captured French trucks transporting supplies which was their Achilles heal.
There was also almost no consideration given by anyone to amphibious assaults against defended coasts in the interwar period, due to the British failure in the Dardanelles in World War I.
Nickdfresh has hit the nail on the head. While there is much focus on the sharp end of German weaponary, the majority of the army struggled with equipment, especially transport. It’s easy to forget for most of the German army movement was dependant on foot or horse drawn vehicle.
One officer lamented that the most common form of transport on the Eastern front was the Russian ‘Panje’ horse drawn wagon.
Regards to all,
Digger.
the radar sites should have been suppresed along with the fighters and bomers
Dont forget that the german paratroopers were not new which is not a good thing.The feilds in briton were full of poles just waiting for the paratroopers.The next biggest problem is for the germans to get their objectives quikly they would have to land close to their objectives which means close to the enemy,and it takes time to organise the paras after landing(gathering guns and equipment).So they are very vulnarable for a time and all of this is if they are droped in the right place.out of all the para drops in world war two how many were droped in the right place in the dark.
I was watching the History Channel yesterday (on the Chunnel), and it seems the Germans actually considered putting airtight tanks into the water, making them buoyant and outfitting them with snorkels and somehow getting them to drive across the channel as submarines!:shock:
Of course even the Germans thought this was just stupid. The tanks would haven’t have been able to drive once they made contact with the undersea bed as they closed in on shore. And the tankers probably weren’t wild about this either, as if the tanks flooded, they would have to let them fill up with water before they could open the hatches and escape, to equalize pressure.
And I suppose coordinating all this with landing infantry would have been very difficult even if the tanks could get ashore…
G’day,
Nickdfresh rightly points out one of the more bizarre ideas the Germans were looking at. From memory some of the trials were carried out using Panzer III tanks.
This coupled with the largely unworkable and dangerous fleet of towed barges, I really wonder how serious was Sealion. With what they had avaible to them for the operation, it would have been the largest suicide mission in history.
Regards to all,
Digger.