BoB Mathematical Modeling of Alternative Outcomes

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What is Adolfs problem with attacks on the Ruhr? He had already occupied numerous countries and destroyed various cities, was the poor dear developing a victim complex, was he unaware that a state of war existed between Germany and UK

The meeting of August 1st and its declaration were typical of Adolf and Hermanns bumbling nonsense. 7 weeks after Dunkirk and 6 weeks before the planned invasion Herman is told what forces he has left and he with Hitler declare the strategy which obviously takes no account of the forces on both sides. Surely by August the 1st the pair of them had figured out things were not as easy as they thought they would be? I mean point 1 THE LANDING WILL BE IN THE FORM OF A SURPRISE. After 6 weeks of attacks (after the meeting) and having a fleet of barges in French and Belgian ports with time running out before winter there is no possibility of any surprise attack on a broad front in Kent and Sussex, saying it and printing it doesnt make it a reality or even a possibility. Ramsgate to the Isle of Wight by road is 156 miles, oh and just throw in Cornwall too. By the middle of September Goering had 200 serviceable bombers or approximately 1 per mile of coast that had to be supported.
 
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A lot of stuff in there that seems to be of the same idea.
Print it and it will make it so.

Just mine the English channel from Alderney to the Portland bill.

It is 56 miles and there were shore batteries on the Portland peninsula. British only need passage a few miles wide to get reinforcement ships through. British have mine sweepers (converted trawlers) in abundance.
German mines are laid how? submarine? Aircraft? surface ships being shot at by shore batteries or ships operating out of British bases?
Yes the Germans can lay the 20-30 miles closest to France pretty easy but leaving the 20 miles closest to England unmined means the mine field is pretty much worthless.
 

More than worthless, at least in the Baltic Germans had a nasty habit to drive their big destroyers (Zs) and late big torpedo boats (Ts) to their own minefields.
On the night of 17/18 August 1944 big 1,294 t Type 39 torpedo boats T22, T30 and T32. Out of four big Ts sent only T23 survived. Out of 545 crews of the sunken ships only 151 survived.
and on the night of 11/12 December 1944 two big 2,559 t Type 36B destroyers Z35 and Z36 out of three Zs and 2 big Ts. Only 67 crewmembers survived but ended up to Soviet PoWs.
In both cases the mission was to lay new mines very close/close to existing German minefields. In the first case, only a few new mines were laid before the disaster struck, in the latter none.
 
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sounds to me like the problem really started in 1939 when they went into Poland. Hitler hoped that england would sue for peace. In that time the Germans never prepared for the possibility that England would stay in the fight. The German's were effective at dealing with the opposing air power because their goals were the same as the ground forces and they worked better together then the rest. Now I have heard arguments that the French air army had better aircraft and more of it. There is some truth to that on paper. The French were behind in their engine manufacturing next to Germany and England. France had planes being delivered without props, engines, and armaments'. also France really didn't have a lot of fighters and used them as best they could to defend their interior from German bombing. Germany not getting much resistance from any other nation in the air for the first time had met their match. yes goring's hubris clouded his judgement but he was really a politician more then qualified air marshal. Also if I remember correctly the British were on the edge of loosing the battle for the air about the time the Germans shelved the bombing campaign. I do agree with what everyone else is saying I just believe that when they went into Poland both England and France had agreed to fight with Poland. They focused on France, went into Norway and Denmark and not until France was defeated did they look at England. This battle for Britain was born out of desperation and it smelled of it. England already had the initiative and Germany was reacting by attacking without any real intel. Moreover Germany's intel throughout the war was wrong. The soldiers understood but the people that made the decisions were never aloud to give intel that would change the direction that Hitler wanted to go.
 
Welcome to the forum. Just a few points.
1 The Battle of Britain was between the UK (United Kingdom of GB and Northern Ireland, and the Commonwealth) and the Axis, not England against Germany. Although most fighting was over England, Scotland and Wales were also attacked. Italy also took part in attacks on south England. England is only a geographic entity, like the Islands of Hawaii. the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would not have been so serious if it was just Hawaii, it was also one of the United States which changes things more than a little.

2 The L/W obvious aim was to wipe out the RAF, so that is the first thing that Dowding and Park would make sure never happened, the aim of last resort was that the RAF still existed, even if much reduced.

3 At the time of the "Hardest Day" 18 August 1940 which saw the most intense fighting and biggest losses so far on both sides the RAF was under severe pressure, but so was the LW, so far they had made no real progress in destroying the RAF, its infrastructure or its factories. By the time the L/W raids were switched from airfields to London it was all the L/W could actually do, they were down to circa 200 serviceable bombers. Some squadrons were down to 3 serviceable planes and crew, the only thing that could be done at short notice was to give a meeting point, time and a target with basic instructions about formation.

4 Intel was wrong on both sides, the British swallowed a lot of Goerings propaganda about the strength of the LW while Goering and his assistants swallowed their own about the RAF. So the RAF always thought their enemy was stronger than it actually was and the LW thought the RAF was weaker, despite the reality both saw every day.
 
Right, the LW couldn't be everywhere at once. You want to attack the Home Fleet as it descends upon the barges? That's nice. Write off air support for the German invasion forces. Will those bombers be escorted? If so, write off air-cover for the resupply barges, leaving them open to air attack. You want to provide air cover for the barges? Then the bombers attacking the Home Fleet will be unescorted. Stukas, you say? They'd better have fighters covering them.

The German Navy was eliminated as a serious covering force by action in Norway. The LW was going to have to shepherd the barges across, and escort bomber which would at any rate have to choose between supporting the land assault or attacking the RN which would be attacking the fleet of barges. Consider that the barges probably had five-six days' turnaround time while you're making this calculation.

It looks to me like the Germans either land too small a force to take Britain, or land and then strand a large force.

The RN is a factor that cannot be ignored, and unlikely to be defeated by air alone. The British destroyers and patrol vessels based in south England, separate from the Home Fleet, could wreak havoc upon a transport force having very light naval defense, and do so in one-night sorties, returning to bases by morning ... where the Luftwaffe could choose to disperse its combat power further attacking them, while the Home Fleet sails in for the kill.

I'm not buyin' it. As ABC ordered later, in 1943, "sink, burn, destroy" would be the order of the day. The Germans ashore would be stranded for mopping-up, because the Germans simply did not have the strength to achieve the goal of the operation.

Those airplanes eaten up achieving air superiority cannot be in two places at one time.
 

Laying mines is in some ways fairly straight forward. The problem is how do you stop the RN from clearing them when the RN have a good number of minesweepers, a much larger pool of trained seamen and pretty much the freedom of the seas during the night? Plus of course the same advantages would apply to the British laying mines
 
Let's not forget that those barges were nowhere near as capable as Allied Higgins boats, LSD's, LST's, LCVP's, LCPL's, AMTRAC's et al. I believe that many of those invasion barges were unpowered and would have to be towed. I'm sure someone here would have an answer to that.
 

They already have. I'm one of those weirdos who reads an entire thread before posting in it. That info is disputed for a couple of pages, but I find it hard to credit most of the powered barges with more than ten knots or so, and obviously much less than that if (as likely) towing an unpowered barge as well.

Marshalling, loading, and landing the troops -- and equipment! -- will add time to their turnaround, and they will be vulnerable to daylight air attack at all stages of operations unless plentifully equipped with flak (meaning fewer flak crews and guns ashore) or given fighter cover.
 
pbehn said:
The Battle of Britain was between the UK (United Kingdom of GB and Northern Ireland, and the Commonwealth) and the Axis, not England against Germany.
Click to expand...

To be fair to the original poster, the Germans described the entire British Isles as England En-Ge-Lahnd (much to the consternation of the Scots, Welsh and Irish)
 
A few notes about Sealion. It is worth noting that the Kriegsmarine, from Raeder down thought it a futile gesture, for good reason apart from the invasion barges being totally inadequate, the unpredictable weather, the timing of transit, Goring's relative failure to subdue the RAF etc. By July 1940 it had lost one armoured cruiser, the Adm Graf Spee, three cruisers and ten destroyers. Two battleships were not ready and the other two were in dry dock under repair after being torpedoed and its remaining two armoured cruisers were also in dock being repaired. This left one heavy cruiser, three light cruisers and nine destroyers facing five battleships, one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and 57 (yup, fifty-seven) destroyers in British waters alone, to say nothing of the Mediterranean fleet that quite probably would not have sat idly by whilst Britain was being invaded.
 
nuuumannn said:
To be fair to the original poster, the Germans described the entire British Isles as England En-Ge-Lahnd
Click to expand...

Having lived in Scotland and witnessing the natives' hatred for the English, I believe this is why the Scots hated the Germans and made such good soldiers and PT instructors.
 
nuuumannn said:
To be fair to the original poster, the Germans described the entire British Isles as England En-Ge-Lahnd (much to the consternation of the Scots, Welsh and Irish)
Click to expand...
Many did at the time and still do, Ive worked with Scots Welsh and Irish all over the world, most people in the world don't understand the difference between England Great Britain and UK. In Japan I worked with a Scot who had £500 in Scottish pound notes, which the Japanese wouldn't accept, he went BALLISTIC. When abroad, I used to tell local people to ask my Scottish colleagues whereabouts in England they came from, just for the laughs. It works with Americans too, I once asked my boss from Oregon whereabouts in Canada it is, his reaction was comedy gold.
 
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