AH: Operation Sea Lion – the unmentionable sea mammal

[Death's Companion]

In point of fact, one of the few things I know about a relative of mine from Champagne is that he went to court against the Etat Français (Vichy) which was trying to requisition his plough horse to help in the German war effort.

As the French state did not envision its swift defeat, it did not make much contingency planning for its evacuation of critical material and war-related supplies although a lot of individuals took ad hoc measures such as Joliot-Curie moving the heavy water supply out of Paris and into the south and out of the country. So a UK which has time to consider an invasion would absolutely figure out how to deny anything of import to an invading enemy.

I don't know why but I am reminded of the scene in Boondocks where Grandpa starts a civil rights protest on the grounds that the bus company is obliged to give him a separate but equal men's room. How does one go about taking a collaborationist fascist state to court and why would one bother?

 

[Redolegna]

I don't know why but I am reminded of the scene in Boondocks where Grandpa starts a civil rights protest on the grounds that the bus company is obliged to give him a separate but equal men's room. How does one go about taking a collaborationist fascist state to court and why would one bother?

Well, he won, so...

I think the answer is because it was his livelihood and he would have lost everything without the horse so it was worth doing it even if chances were low. And while the courts and the judges had some appalling caporalist practices under Vichy (and the lawyers gladly shucked out the Jews from the profession), there was still the same legalistic attitudes that they had gone through in their training. In this case, the state was overreaching and got slapped down.

 

[OwenM]

Well, he won, so...

I think the answer is because it was his livelihood and he would have lost everything without the horse so it was worth doing it even if chances were low. And while the courts and the judges had some appalling caporalist practices under Vichy (and the lawyers gladly shucked out the Jews from the profession), there was still the same legalistic attitudes that they had gone through in their training. In this case, the state was overreaching and got slapped down.

IIRC they couldn't even get Blum convicted in the show trial?

 

[Redolegna]

IIRC they couldn't even get Blum convicted in the show trial?

That was because their charges were patently ridiculous and he was good enough to defend himself, as did Daladier. As they had not completely stacked the trial in their favour by letting regular judges preside over it, they had to let it lapse into insignificance.

In the case of my relative, it was just that a legalistic reading of the law, the standard in French law and one behind which a lot of judges hid during that time, both for good and ill, showed he was right while the situation was not big enough an emergency to justify a derogation.

 

[Md139115]

Something Ed pointed out to me was that the German military was reliant on horses for transportation of loads of stuff, the perception of the Wehrmacht as a hyper efficient mechanised force is a wild exaggeration, so they would have had to load a lot of horses (including fodder etc) onto those barges.

30 hours.

Loads of horses.

On boats.

For 30 hours.

I'm no scientist but that doesn't sound pleasant.

William the Conqueror did it!

 

[The Red]

I suspect horses would have been in the first resupply, and they'd have banked on just capturing local horses and vehicles initially.

I don't know if that would be the case, the Germans never liked to bank on living off the land in the same way their Japanese allies did, although German strategic plans tended to be more overambitious as well so it arguably equals out. When you look at the Eastern Front in 1941 the Germans really struggled with the shortfall they faced between losing horses to artillery, fatigue and trying to make up the shortfall with local "Panje" horses, which were tough but couldn't draw most German vehicles (which tended to be made out of steel) or the standard German artillery pieces. In the winter 1941-42 horses started dying in droves, a thousand every day in Army Group Centre alone. Looting occupied Europe for horses was how they got by, and this was with a reliable (albeit inadequate) railway link towards the Eastern Front.

Considering Sea Lion in this case, the average German division could get by with around 4000 horses at the best of times (on average it was closer to 5000 but they've got enough going against them as it is) so the first and second waves would require more than 40,000 horses for the first and second waves and over 20,000 for the third. Let's be charitably clinical and put the number at 60,000 horses. That's a fraction of the what the Ostheer required but the Germans only have a fraction of the capacity to get them to South East England. It's a scenario where every single horse the Germans can acquire on the British Isles is going to count.

 

[Simon]

Given the Nazis weren't total idiots when it came to fighting wars...

They might not have been idiots but they had very little experience of amphibious warfare, even the UK with their history of it had let their knowledge atrophy in the inter-war years. To reference Rumsfeld it's the unknown unknowns, the things that you don't know that you don't know, 'that tend to be the difficult ones'.

One of the reasons I think it is such a hardy perennial is that it is so deeply intertwined in the national mythos of the Battle of Britain.

It's certainly intertwined in the organisational mythos of the RAF.

Something Ed pointed out to me was that the German military was reliant on horses for transportation of loads of stuff...

Want to take a guess where they got a fair amount of their stock from? When the British Army was mechanising in the 1930s they obviously sold off large numbers of their now unneeded horses...

AH Vignette: Auxiliary Units just massacring thousands of Kent horses

Now steady on! Burning down French refineries, tank farms, and even petrol stations is one thing, but shooting horses is an entirely different matter.

 

[lordroel]

Now steady on! Burning down French refineries, tank farms, and even petrol stations is one thing, but shooting horses is an entirely different matter.

Well i wonder if the Soviets did the same thing during the world war II.

 

[Death's Companion]

Well i wonder if the Soviets did the same thing during the world war II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth

 

[lordroel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth

Well would the AU do that also on the scale what the Soviets did.

 

[Death's Companion]

Well would the AU do that also on the scale what the Soviets did.

Probably not.

The war in the west was if not clean at least paid some notice to the rules. The Germans probably wouldn't be half as brutal and the British not half so desperate as the Soviets. It would be a fight to the finish but the finish would be defeat not destruction. I don't think that the British government would think in the same terms as a totalitarian dictatorship.

 

[Geordie]

The "unknown unknowns" is something I tried to address in my Sea Lion entry. In 1940, did anybody know that the shingle beaches of the South coast would be, essentially, impassable to tanks?

Iirc, the British only really discovered this when looking at how to get back onto the continent without a port. I've seen no evidence that the Heer had considered it as a potential problem. If they discover that at Dungeness and Brighton, that will spoil a lot of people's day. If they discover this when contesting the landing with the Army, while the RAF throw everything airborne at them, and the RN shell the beaches, then the whole landing is fucked before anybody works out a solution.

You can't plan for unknown unknowns. You don't know they need to be planned for.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Would that also killing other livestock and even posiling water supplies by the AU.

Didn't the Germans do some of that in Normandy?

 

[Geordie]

Didn't the Germans do some of that in Normandy?

Very limited, I believe. But if they practised landings on sand beaches (and I cannot confirm or deny that), then it still comes as a surprise in Sussex.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Very limited, I believe. But if they practised landings on sand beaches (and I cannot confirm or deny that), then it still comes as a surprise in Sussex.

Oh the shingle is going to fuck them right up. Thats a pain in the arse to even walk up sometimes at low tide.

 

[Death's Companion]

The "unknown unknowns" is something I tried to address in my Sea Lion entry. In 1940, did anybody know that the shingle beaches of the South coast would be, essentially, impassable to tanks?

Iirc, the British only really discovered this when looking at how to get back onto the continent without a port. I've seen no evidence that the Heer had considered it as a potential problem. If they discover that at Dungeness and Brighton, that will spoil a lot of people's day. If they discover this when contesting the landing with the Army, while the RAF throw everything airborne at them, and the RN shell the beaches, then the whole landing is fucked before anybody works out a solution.

You can't plan for unknown unknowns. You don't know they need to be planned for.

How did the Germans plan to unload tanks anyway? The Allies had various ways of doing so but very few that were ideal for an opposed landing and by necessity most landings remained mostly an infantry show. Did the Germans have any thinking on how to get their heavy equipment across?

 

[Geordie]

Oh the shingle is going to fuck them right up. Thats a pain in the arse to even walk up sometimes at low tide.

Exactly, and this is why known unknowns are such a killer (literally, in military planning).

You often don't know what you don't know. It's what the Wehraboos come up against. Having an enterprising Junior officer coming up with a trick to get tanks across the shingle is putting the cart before the horse. Nobody knows they need an enterprising trick. Nobody needs a clever solution if the problem literally isn't even a glimmer on the horizon. If they've practised landing on a sand beach, and it worked, there is likely no consideration given to the fact that 90% of the proposed landing grounds are not actually sandy. This is pretty much guaranteed in an operation as ad hoc and "calculated on the back of a fag paper" as Sea Lion is likely to be. That means that the clever trick needs to be a spontaneous one. Thought up on the beach. During a contested landing. If the enterprising junior officer does actually exist, he likely drowns when his barge overturns, eats a 4.5" shell as he's explaining the plan, or is stuck on garrison duty in Krakow.

Even if he's:

• in the right place to make the landing at Camber a success
• and reaches the shore unscathed
• and gets over the shock of OH FUCK THE TANKS AREN'T MOVING
• and explains his genius to a nearby colonel
• and said colonel listens when OH FUCK THE TANKS AREN'T MOVING
• and they have the tools/ equipment on hand to enact the plan
• and they can complete the plan while anything larger than a pigeon is dropping bombs on their heads
• and no RN battlewagon decides to make a new set of bunkers on the golf course, starting with their fox hole
• and the Stukas don't crash land on his head
• and the local bank manager doesn't pot him with a Lee-Enfield
• and they manage to get the tanks off the beach and establish a bridgehead.

that's of no use to the poor fuckers outside Folkstone who came ashore at the same time, and OH FUCK THEIR TANKS AREN'T MOVING either.

 

[Geordie]

How did the Germans plan to unload tanks anyway? The Allies had various ways of doing so but very few that were ideal for an opposed landing and by necessity most landings remained mostly an infantry show. Did the Germans have any thinking on how to get their heavy equipment across?

I'm not sure the actual plan really drilled down that far, thanks to the whole "well, the RAF and RN will need to be absent" pre-condition.

The Wehraboo uses a rare alloy of handwavium and narrativium. Which tends to be very brittle when exposed to the slightest of pressure.

 

[Death's Companion]

In total fairness I do recall that both the British and Americans independently trawled geology deparments at universities and sent commando teams to try and figure out what sand would be on beaches in Europe and the Pacific. This being long before the hard won experience of the island hopping campaign. So it seems to me at least not unlikely that the Germans if they got to the point of seriously launching an invasion would have had someone or other look into this stuff because their counterparts knew about it off hand.


That's one of my big problems with Sea Lion. The points of comparison for it are either ad hoc operations against feeble resistance or the most carefully planned and organised operations in the history of warfare. The Germans never got beyond the ad hoc stage even in training. I really don't see even Hitler who at times fretted over individual divisions or ships or what have you suddenly declaring one day "today we invade!" if given a five minute summary of what could go wrong. I think Sea Lion is impossible as it was envisioned in our TL but I don't think that that is the version that would ever be carried out. How many crazy plans did the American and British shelve? How many times did the Germans get spooked and call a halt or demand campaigns be waged with obscure long term problems in mind over glaring short term issues? I don't think it would get D-Day levels of prep but I do think they'd probably spend at least a year or two on it as they keep realising there are gaps in their knowledge and by that point they are war with the USSR/USA and have other issues.

The Allies learned a lot as they went along and encountered problems but they also spent years in war and peace thinking about what problems they might face. The German's don't have that time but again I don't think they are stupid enough to just assume things would work out in something they've never tried. And their practice landings were so disastrous I don't think anyone took a look at them and went "we've got this." And the problems would become more and more obvious the more prep they did until one day I think they would just decide that if they could break the RN and RAF they'll just starve Britain out.

 

[Geordie]

You're right @Death's Companion, and that's why the most likely outcome is OTL's: Sea Lion just doesn't happen.

Realistically, the Germans cannot do Sea Lion '40, and Sea Lion '41 is a push. And that's assuming that they don't stick their dick in the hornet's nest of crazy that is the USSR. If they do that, then the Sea Lion is off the table indefinitely. Barbarossa or not, 1940 is too early.

And the UK will have recovered to repel a Sea Lion '41. So That's too late.

So it just doesn't happen. Or Adolf Notler and the Notzis make changes from about 1928, which nobody responds to, and the whole thing gets a bit silly, because the scales have a Maus sitting on them, just to get the Sea Lion across to Kent.

If they'd had literally nowt better to do from the Fall of France until the summer of 1942, then there might have been some plans that had a chance of success, and a modicum of thought put into them. But they had different priorities.