Germany wasn’t anywhere close to achieving sustainable air superiority at any point in the war. There is not a single month during the Battle of Britain where the number of RAF fighter pilots available for operations actually went down, and had the RAF started suffering enough losses to deplete reserves, they could retreat to bases in northern Britain while they recovered. Also during the time that they were fighting, they were trying to protect all of England from German attacks, but if the RN was sailing to stop an invasion they could focus entirely on that task, which is a lot harder for the Germans to counter.
Further, ground attack airplanes are not overly effective at taking out ships at sea, and Germany didn’t have many naval attack planes or the equipment and training capacity to retrofit existing planes for antiship operations in time to be of use. Midway involved specialized aircraft attacking carriers that had depleted their own air cover, and did nothing close to wiping out the entire fleet. Germany’s only large scale transport craft were river barges that could be pressed into service as troop transports, which had a shallow draft and could be sunk by a destroyer sailing at speed near them. The Germans didn’t just need to be able to inflict losses on Royal Navy forces to protect their supply line, they would have to wipe out any RN forces completely which is a much harder task.
That would have been an absolutely necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition. The Germans definitely didn’t have over-beach landing capabilities like the Allies in 1944, or any plan like the Mulberry Harbor to create an artificial port for conventional resupply ships without seizing a port. They would have to have taken a port.
And again since the British Army was so weak, even by later in 1940, that probably would have been possible initially. The problem would have been, once the main element of the German force was ashore and clear where its effort was concentrated, and where the follow up supply shipping would be going, how to keep that sea line of supply and reinforcement open, very difficult especially assuming as historically the Luftwaffe failed to established daylight air superiority over southern England.
Compare that to 1944: the drama of the Allied landing itself has naturally mainly captured the imagination. But once the mystery was solved for the Germans where the main Allied effort would actually fall, they lacked much ability to do anything much about to cut off resupply and reinforcement shipping even knowing where exactly it was headed. They pretty much had to destroy the initial landing to have any chance. The Germans in 1940 OTOH were very far from preventing the British doing anything about follow up supply and reinforcement shipping once the initial landing telegraphed where that would be concentrated. Likewise the British Army was much too small to actually defeat a concentrated initial landing of any size when itself spread out all along the coast, unless codebreaking or other intel info told them for sure the exact target. But once the landing occurred they could concentrate to contain it, so it mattered how big that British force was compared to how big a force the Germans could quickly build up with follow on waves, with RN and RAF knowing where exactly to look for that shipping.
There’s something of a politics/mythology to this it seems. Destroyers sinking landing craft with their wakes from miles away? But purportedly serious books by actual publishers have had stuff as far fetched. But as long as the RN was basically intact and RAF not suppressed over southern England the limited German shipping would have been at serious risk of being attrited to where it couldn’t support a big enough force to overcome even the small British Army, once the latter concentrated on the port(s) seized.
A large portion of the German landing craft were river barges (some converted, some unmodified) that can only handle sea state 2, which is waves under half a meter tall, and will capsize when facing larger waves. A destroyer moving at speed can leave a meter tall wake for a long distance, though I can’t find exact numbers with a quick google search. There’s nothing mythological about river barges capsizing when facing waves much larger than they’ll encounter on a river.
It’s certainly not as absurd as the plan for a fleet of barges to approach the coast in column at night, turn out into a line once near the coast, then in sync rotate to shore, maintain distance and land, all carried out for the first time (no practice run possible) with an average of one trained sailor per ship. But that was part of the German landing plan that people here think could have worked! Operation Sealion is a pretty good write up that I found of just how ill-prepared Germany was for the task.
EDIT: that page also points out the ineffectiveness of the Luftwaffe against Royal Navy ships - at Dunkirk, there were 39 destroyers operating in cramped conditions and the Luftwaffe managed to sink a total of 4 over the course of the entire operation.
Germany has no LVT’s LCU’s, LCA’s, LCI’s, TLC’s, LST’s LSD’s, LSI’s etc.
Look at what naval craft were built and used to enable D Day.
That is an enormous amount of specialized landing capable vessels, from small to ship sized.
Germany has non of those, and you are not invading a country by towing a couple barges across.
Also Germany has nothing to directly take on the RN, who if it came to invasion, would be all on the home front.
Read the proposed ideas for getting to the shore for Operation Sealion.
nuts and failure
The German navy was no obstacle in 1944 but the RN certainly was. Heck by 1944 the Luftwaffe wasnt much of a obstacle.
There is some Alt Hist on this. It subsumes there is a vote of Confidence, Churchill resigns, new PM deals with Germany, which was prepared to offer very generous conditions.
With GB out, Russia falls. However, American is free to whup on the IJN with all forces earlier. Question is, does Germany still declare on the USA after Pearl Harbor? if so, American nukes Germany if needed.
No sorry that’s ridiculous, the destroyer wakes from miles idea. It’s not to pick but like I said books (not to mention websites, just citing a website with a theory means nothing) have stuff that goes over the top about German problems or British defensive capabilities for some reason.
I’m a naval architect by training. If a vessel is seaworthy enough to cross in likely natural conditions, you’re not going to capsize it from miles away with a DD’s wake. Maybe somebody came up with that idea as an exaggerated way to point to the potential issue of bad weather in the Channel for ‘shore to shore’ operation with non-seagoing craft. Even the Allies potentially faced that problem in June 1944, with the smaller of the more ‘professionally’ designed landing craft that crossed by themselves, and those which required launch from larger ships. That’s one reason Eisenhower had a message ready to explain a failure. Weather and sea conditions are highly variable and had been too rough not long before the D-Day landing.*
But the Germans didn’t just have river vessels or quickly built landing craft but also the significant portion of the French merchant fleet left intact in Channel and Biscay ports, plus similar types of reasonably seaworthy smaller vessels (fishing etc) of the kind the British used in evacuating the BEF from Dukirk. But not enough to project a force as large as would have been ideal for a quick victory, and again the larger the force the more shipping needed to resupply it, and the British would know where the resupply shipping would converge, which they wouldn’t necessarily know the night of the initial landing. The destroyers wouldn’t have to sink resupply shipping with their wakes, they’d be a menace using their guns, and torpedoes against bigger targets, at night when daylight air superiority wouldn’t prevent it (and again the Germans never really achieved it anyway), and the German surface fleet was much smaller than the British.
*although the parallels between 1940 and 1944 are not exact. The Allies decided to launch and support for weeks at least an invasion entirely over beaches. After 4 years for the Germans to prepare, the risk of being able to seize a sufficient French port intact was too high, and the D-Day beaches (and the associated Mulberry artificial harbor) supported the whole Allied force in France until the fall of 1944, which eventually became a serious logistical limitation, but only when the Allied armies had reached the German border. The Germans in 1940 100% would have had to seize a British Channel port, taking the risk of succeeding, but though it wasn’t as daunting as Allied prospect in 1944. Seizing a port wouldn’t solve the problem of protecting resupply shipping, but supporting the invasion force the way the Allies did in 1944 was out of the question.
I may be completely wrong about the ‘miles’ figure, but I’m not wrong about the wake capsizing river barges - that, incidentally, weren’t seaworthy enough to cross in likely natural conditions, but only in clear weather. If your training is relevant to this discussion, then tell me at what distance a destroyer cruising at 20 knots leaves a 1 meter wake - because that’s enough to capsize the river barges Germany used.
They assembled 170 cargo ships, 1277 barges, and 471 tugboats for Sea Lion, lost about 10% to British bombing, then dispersed them once they decided to call off the plan. Most of the vessels similar to those used to evacuate the BEF from Dunkirk weren’t suitable for improvised use as landing craft, because they need a port to load or offload troops, they can’t just sail near the beach, offload, and leave.
No one said that they would have to, but the fact that the fearsome sea lion invasion could be mauled by a single destroyer sailing beside it without firing a gun highlights how ill-prepared they were.
Seizing a defended port with no heavy weapons is a pretty daunting prospect. The Royal Military Academy has used a version of Operation Sea Lion where the RN and RAF leave the invasion and supply ships alone entirely as a training exercise a number of times. In none of them have the ‘German’ side come remotely close to capturing a port, or even being able to break out of their initial landing zones.
As I understand it the RAF was within weeks or even days of collapse when Hitler changed the German objective to bombing London from destroying the RAF’s infrastructure.
The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Norse might disagree with you about it never being invaded before that. The Celts who had controlled the British Isles for a very long time before Julius Caesar’s first failed attempt at invasion might join in the disagreement.
North Africa hadn’t kicked off for Germany yet and without British intervention against the Italians might not have seen German involvement. France still had a bit of time left between the Dunkirk time frame and their capitulation. That wasn’t particularly long term if you are looking at bookings.
It’s already a very tough problem for Germany. We don’t need to make it harder.
I’m not convinced at all. A nation that has accepted defeat and got acceptable peace terms (and Hitler intended to be quite lenient with the UK) is unlikely to be willing to declare war again in short order. And for whom sake? For Yugoslavia or Greece? Very dubious. For the Soviet Union? Even more dubious. How do you sell a second round to a dismayed British public opinion? Who would do that? Why, exactly?
Then there’s the war with Japan that could have changed things. But it’s not obvious at all to me that if Germany was at peace with the UK (hence no lend-lease related beef with the USA) it would have sided with Japan. So, I can see two wars going on (Japan vs USA+UK on one side, Soviet Union vs Germany on the other).
A nation like Britain; which had spent the previous 400 years fighting to ensure that there was no one dominant power on the European continent. It was a cornerstone of British policy. They had been earlier forced to accept temporary peace by Louis XIV and Napoleon. Peace, which had typically been broken as soon as they were able I see nothing in 1940 which would be different. Yugoslavia and Greece? The British went to war using Belgium, Poland or even a damn sailor’s ear as an excuse. And German Greece actually would threaten British control of the Eastern Mediterranean. No brainer.
The RAF was certainly struggling, but it would hardly be classified as weeks, let alone days away from a collapse. The Germans had failed to achieve air superiority and were struggling as well.
You must mean ‘swamp’ not ‘capsize’. River craft typically have a lot stability, waves washing over them and ‘down flooding’ would be the problem. However again I’m pretty sure you’ve somehow picked up somebody’s hyperbole in the destroyer wake thing pointing to issue of narrow window of weather conditions to avoid serious trouble, not using destroyer wakes as a weapon
But a larger % of the carrying capacity would be the relatively larger vessels. And a lot of smaller British vessels picked up BEF off beaches in the Dunkirk area, not only within port proper.
Again I think it’s somebody’s poetic license.
Here again I think one issue is left over ‘can do’ attitude on the British side from the time. With a relatively weak British force needing to spread out along the whole coast and with a big deficit in heavy equipment itself, I don’t see why it would have been anywhere near impossible for the Germans to seize a port, or why ‘landing beaches’ would be any significant distance from one. IMO the more even handed analysis would give the Germans a very good chance of gaining a lodgement including a port due to how thin the British land defense was and inability to instantly react with naval forces, but then a more difficult time building up and keeping supplied a large enough force to break out and conquer the whole country, once British antishipping efforts could then be concentrated on traffic to that port, and ships within it.
It’s not about weather conditions, it’s about the extreme vulnerability of the invasion fleet. When the bulk of the vessels carrying troops can be sunk by a destroyer without the destroyer even firing a shot, it’s clear that the invasion has problems.
Taking a defended city quickly enough that the defenders can’t render port facilities useless is pretty difficult, look at Dieppe for an example of how that goes. Now try it with no heavy artillery (only man-portable mortars and grenades), no naval support, practically no air support (the luftwaffe is going to be busy trying to sink RN ships), after spending a day floating around the sea in a river barge. Also take all of the attacking units to half strength - the one time they did a landing exercise for practice, they did so poorly that only about half of the landing force wouldn’t make it.
You, and others like you, keep ignoring that the German forces would NOT be remotely like the ones sweeping across France or later penetration deep into Russia. No artillery, no AT guns, almost no tanks, little ammunition or food, and seasick from the long crossing. People make a big deal about the BEF losing most of its heavy equipment at Dunkirk, and how there were ‘only’ three fully equipped divisions for defense, but fail to realize that the invading German forces would be in even worse shape for heavy equipment.
They didn’t need to react instantly. The barges Germany was towing would need about 30 hours to cross the channel at the longest point in the proposed invasion plans, so the RN would have time to stop for tea and still react long before the landing could be carried out.
No heavy artillery or AT guns, including any of the stuff that generally comes to mind artillery or AT guns, just lightweight man-portable weapons with whatever ammunition a guy can carry on a swim to shore.
Also, there weren’t any .50 caliber anti-tank rifles in WW2, so they definitely wouldn’t have had any of those
