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To be honest 2 knots or 6 doesn't really matter to me. At six you are looking for your troops to spend hours at sea in a converted barge and I promise they will be in no condition to fight.
What interests me is how the germans expected to control thousands of horses in the first wave?
I think I would travel around France looking for things to add to my collections (art, wines, etc) and take them back home.
Then I would tell Hitler what he wants to hear...
I would also send some bombers at night so that I could tell Hitler that I have a 24 hour effort and that Britain won't last much longer.
Hello Glider
IMHO you are unduly pessimistic. E.g. Vikings could sail long distances on their longships and be ready to fight at the moment they disembarked, IIRC they also sometimes had some horses with them but at lest Normans could transport easily heavy cavalry horses on their ships as they did in 1066.
Juha
Parsifal so help me to find tell me the pages i can read for find this german port.
Again you've not source for tell that barges go only a 2 kts in 1940, and a 6 kts non need 30 hours for the passage, also in the far barges invasion bases were enough near to need less 20 hours probably less.
The Luftwaffe came close in late August 1940 to defeating the RAF.
There is a consensus among historians that the Luftwaffe simply could not crush the RAF. Stephen Bungay described Dowding and Park's strategy of choosing when to engage the enemy whilst maintaining a coherent force as vindicated. The RAF proved to be a robust and capable organisation which was to use all the modern resources available to it to the maximum advantage.[215] Richard Evans wrote:
Irrespective of whether Hitler was really set on this course, he simply lacked the resources to establish the air superiority that was the sine qua non-of a successful crossing of the English Channel. A third of the initial strength of the German air force, the Luftwaffe, had been lost in the western campaign in the spring. The Germans lacked the trained pilots, the effective fighter planes, and the heavy bombers that would have been needed.[216][nb 26]
The Germans launched some spectacular attacks against important British industries, but they could not destroy the British industrial potential, and made little systematic effort to do so. Hindsight does not disguise the fact the threat to Fighter Command was very real, and for the participants it seemed as if there was a narrow margin between victory and defeat. Nevertheless, even if the German attacks on the 11 Group airfields which guarded southeast England and the approaches to London had continued, the RAF could have withdrawn to the Midlands out of German fighter range and continued the battle from there.[218] The victory was as much psychological as physical. Writes Alfred Price:
The truth of the matter, borne out by the events of 18 August is more prosaic: neither by attacking the airfields, nor by attacking London, was the Luftwaffe likely to destroy Fighter Command. Given the size of the British fighter force and the general high quality of its equipment, training and morale, the Luftwaffe could have achieved no more than a Pyrrhic victory. During the action on 18 August it had cost the Luftwaffe five trained aircrewmen killed, wounded or taken prisoner, for each British fighter pilot killed or wounded; the ratio was similar on other days in the battle. And this ratio of 5:1 was very close to that between the number of German aircrew involved in the battle and those in Fighter Command. In other words the two sides were suffering almost the same losses in trained aircrew, in proportion to their overall strengths. In the Battle of Britain, for the first time during the Second World War, the German war machine had set itself a major task which it patently failed to achieve, and so demonstrated that it was not invincible. In stiffening the resolve of those determined to resist Hitler the battle was an important turning point in the conflict.
The shortage of trained fighter pilots in September 1940 was critical.
There is certainly not a consensus that a better organised and coordinated attack could not have succeeded.
At the meeting of 21 July 1940,, the KM advised the heer that their plan would take 10 days to get the first wave ashore. That was with 260000 in the first wave. In the September permutation of the plan, the first wave had been reduced to about 100000 men. The heer expected that it would take 4 days to get the first wave from point of embarkation to to the landing sites. That was never confirmed or agreed to by the KM.
However assuming the Heer was about right, and further assuming the distance to travel was an average of say 80-100 miles, thats an average distance covered of 20 miles a day. Or less than 1 knot fleet speed.
However if you allow say 1 day for embarkation and 1 day to disembark, you can increase your best fleet speed to 2 knots.
If the flleet speed of the force was 6 knots and the distance to be covered is 80 miles, the time to traverse the distance will be about 13-15 hours. however there would need to be time to embark and assemble the fleet outside the ports of departure, and then time to disembark. If these elements of embarkation and disembarkation each take about 24 hours each, then a fleet speed reduces the duration of the operation to 3 days.
By comparison, the embarkation process for Overlord took 2 days and the disembarkation took about 6 hours, give or take. But Overloord was undertaken with speccially designed vessels, by people with vastly more amphoibious experience. One of the big problems for the Germans was how they would actually get their transports unloaded
Again you change the facts
The first directive for the operation was on 2nd july (was request to navy for landing 25/40 divisions). The 9th the Navy ask to Army and to LW their operational intentions wich would form a basis for Naval preparations. In the discussion of 15th July already were talking if embarking port in franco-belgian coast. 16th July the 2nd directive, (Sealion codename), The 20thJuly the Navy knewn that the Army want a 100,000 men first wave (embarked from the area cherbourg-dunkirq). the 25th July the first wave go down to 90,000 (from Ostend-Cherbourg), the 2nd wave would be 160,000 men this wave was not possible simultaneus so need 4/5 echelons at intervals of 2 days (this 260,000 were 13 divisions). The timetable of 2nd wave was inaceptable for the Army.
Im not changing anything. im just over arguing with someone who has abslotely no idea what they are talking about.