Operation Sealion

NWO Sentryman

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I know, i've said it. It's a common cliche among writers, yet why do people deride Sealion?
 
Because it never had a snowball's chance in hell of being successful. The entire Kriegsmarine had an effective strength that could be overwhelmed by the Royal Navy's light forces based on Harwich, and the troops were to be ferried over in strings of towed barges in a 24-hour crossing; the assault barges were then to have their bows blown off by explosives, and yet would have been required afterwards for supply crossings. The barges in transit could have been sunk by the bow wave of a destroyer making a high-speed pass; the RN wouldn't have had to slow down, stop zig-zagging or even fire their guns, so they would have been very difficult for U-boats to sink, and at the time the Luftwaffe didn't have a credible anti-shipping capability. Even if, by some combination of miracle and British incompetence, the German army had managed to land any significant forces, they would have been unable to supply them, leading to a quick surrender when they ran out of fuel, ammunition and food; an armoured division at the time required something like 100 tons of supplies a day.

There's a legend that Sandhurst, who regularly wargame Sealion, tried a scenario where the forces available to the defence were the Walmington-on-Sea platoon of the Home Guard, Captain Pugwash in the Black Pig, and Snoopy in a Sopwith Camel. The Germans still lost.

Dave
 
In order to get a beachead the germans would have needed to gain total control of a section of the channel both on the surface and in the air. They couldn't get control in the air because there was no way even on paper to get rid of RAF northern command. On the surface first mover advantage could have given them control but that would not have lasted long enough for any resupply to take place.

There is also the issue what they could ship over. They didn't have any real capacity to land tanks on the beaches and by the time they might have been able to get hold of a harbour the royal navy would have been in play.

So the best senario is that they manage to would be land a light force and manage to grab a harbour before the channel was closed to them again. Then well the british army may not have been that good but I think a light force with limited supplies would have been within it's capacity to deal with. Particularly when you remeber that it would have had mustard gas and the germans would not.
 
Somewhere on the site axishistory.com there's an essay which details the state of play of both nations and exactly what the Germans would have had to have done to succeed.

Basically it entails them building dedicated landing craft (an unknown form of vehicle at that time) sometime between 1936 and '38, at the expense of U-boats and many other offensive craft.

Even then, the 'remnants' of the British Army that got off the beaches at Normandy weren't some rag tag gang wandering the streets barefoot and wrapped in blankets for weeks. As soon as they were back they were preparing defences and training to fight again. (There's also a statistic that says that pretty much every piece of heavy artillery left in France had been replaced within a couple of months. That's not a huge window of opportunity. Britain wasn't sitting idly waiting for the invasion, it was preparing, day and night).

Overlord took years in the planning and who knows how many man-years of training, not because the Allies were incompetent but simply because that's how long it should have taken to plan an invasion of a hostile shore. By comparison Sealion was like a sketch dashed off to satisfy Hitler. It would have been Germany's Dieppe, if that makes sense.
 
Even if they had gained Air Superiority, it is extremly doubtful if the Germans could have protected the invasion force from the Royal Navy.As pointed out, just a portion of the Light Naval Forces could have devastated the invasion force. And then there was the problem of ReSupply.
And fact was a lot of the German High Command knew this. The Kriegsmarine was very,very, skeptical about the chances of sucess ,and there is evidence that the Naval Plan for Sea Lion was regarded by the Kriegsmarine as just a exercise in futilty done to please the Fuehrer,and never took it seriously. A lot of the Army was also very skeptical, and made conditions for a sucessful landing that they knew were almost impossible in hopes of killing the project. Even Hitler blew hot and cold on the project.
 
I don't know that military historians actually "deride" Operation Sealion. Personally--and I'm not a historian--I don't deride it.

If it had actually been implemented, in anything like the form proposed, I would absolutely deride it. But it wasn't implemented, on account of its many glaring flaws.

So I respect Operation Sealion for what it was: a proposal, a prototype amphibious invasion. In the end, German planners realized they could not afford to make the necessary refinements to the plan, and so they discarded it.

I'm sure Operation Neptune looked very silly in its early planning stages, too. But nobody bothers with that, because the Allies could affort to refine it into the Normandy invasion we know and love today.
 
theprestige said:
I don't know that military historians actually "deride" Operation Sealion. Personally--and I'm not a historian--I don't deride it.

If it had actually been implemented, in anything like the form proposed, I would absolutely deride it. But it wasn't implemented, on account of its many glaring flaws.

So I respect Operation Sealion for what it was: a proposal, a prototype amphibious invasion. In the end, German planners realized they could not afford to make the necessary refinements to the plan, and so they discarded it.

I'm sure Operation Neptune looked very silly in its early planning stages, too. But nobody bothers with that, because the Allies could affort to refine it into the Normandy invasion we know and love today.
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Whatever word you use for it, it wouldn't have worked. The shortage of landing craft alone would have crippled the operation. (c.f. Tarawa)
 
theprestige said:
I don't know that military historians actually "deride" Operation Sealion. Personally--and I'm not a historian--I don't deride it.

If it had actually been implemented, in anything like the form proposed, I would absolutely deride it. But it wasn't implemented, on account of its many glaring flaws.

So I respect Operation Sealion for what it was: a proposal, a prototype amphibious invasion. In the end, German planners realized they could not afford to make the necessary refinements to the plan, and so they discarded it.

I'm sure Operation Neptune looked very silly in its early planning stages, too. But nobody bothers with that, because the Allies could affort to refine it into the Normandy invasion we know and love today.
Click to expand...

The problem was the Germans never had anything near, in equipment or organization , what was needed to carry off an Amhphibious operation on the scale of Sea Lion. It would have taken them a couple of years to build up their Navy into something that had a chance of carrying off the operation.
The German plan was fantasy from day one. Neptune was not.
 
Gawdzilla said:
Whatever word you use for it, it wouldn't have worked. The shortage of landing craft alone would have crippled the operation. (c.f. Tarawa)
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Even if they had enough landing craft, the Royal Navy would have ripped the guts out of the invasion force since the Germans had nowhere near enough surface power to protect it, and even with Air Superiority the Luftwaffe alone would not have been enough to protect the invasion force,let alone protect the follow up without which the invansion force would have been doomed for lack of supplies.
The lack of landing craft was just one of an number or reasons why SeaLion was never feasible.
 
dudalb said:
Even if they had enough landing craft, the Royal Navy would have ripped the guts out of the invasion force since the Germans had nowhere near enough surface power to protect it, and even with Air Superiority the Luftwaffe alone would not have been enough to protect the invasion force,let alone protect the follow up without which the invansion force would have been doomed for lack of supplies.
The lack of landing craft was just one of an number or reasons why SeaLion was never feasible.
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Ummm, I was agreeing with you. I happen to be an assault boat coxswain (retired), so the landing craft issue is of interest to me.
 
Best bet would have had the Luftwaffe close the channel to shipping to help in the naval blockade -- anything more ambitious would not have worked for all the reasons mentioned above.
 
Trojan said:
Best bet would have had the Luftwaffe close the channel to shipping to help in the naval blockade -- anything more ambitious would not have worked for all the reasons mentioned above.
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In situations like that I remember that the predator is running for dinner, but the prey is running for its life. "Defense is to attack as three is to one." Good rule of thumb.
 
Trojan said:
Best bet would have had the Luftwaffe close the channel to shipping to help in the naval blockade -- anything more ambitious would not have worked for all the reasons mentioned above.
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The Luftwaffe did try that in the early stages of the Battle of Britain..and it did not work.
 
dudalb said:
The Luftwaffe did try that in the early stages of the Battle of Britain..and it did not work.
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The Channel Dash showed that air power would have trouble stopping a force navigating the Channel. Against the Home Fleet doing a dash to the invasion beaches, the Heer would be fish food in a few days if not hours. Best guess, of course.
 
Gawdzilla said:
The Channel Dash showed that air power would have trouble stopping a force navigating the Channel. Against the Home Fleet doing a dash to the invasion beaches, the Heer would be fish food in a few days if not hours. Best guess, of course.
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And the British Air Forces were better prepared for Anti Shipping Strikes then the Luftwaffe ever were.
And that is another major problem the Germans in 1940 had: the Luftwaffe had really not paid a lot of attention to Anti Shipping tactics.
 
Gawdzilla said:
Whatever word you use for it, it wouldn't have worked. The shortage of landing craft alone would have crippled the operation. (c.f. Tarawa)
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Of course. That's why it was never implemented. But as a proof of concept, I find it entirely respectable, if for no other reason than it demonstrated that the available resources were not sufficient for the stated goal.
 
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