Well, they were insane, but he certainly could have learned all this in a more well-mannered fashion instead of, you know, roasting him personally.
Last edited:
Ultimate Challenge: Unternehmen Seelöwe
- Thread starter Ariosto
- Start date
Well, they were insane, but he certainly could have learned all this in a more well-mannered fashion instead of, you know, roasting him personally.
Actually, light craft aren't that simple to build and run. The advantage in building is you can use all those little shipyards who made things like yachts and small fishing craft. But you have to gear up for it - basically you have to hand hold them and tell them exactly what to do, then supervise it.
Then, you have the equipment problem. A small craft needs things like guns, torpedoes, engines, all of which are in short supply.
Crews..you need a lot of crew. And maintenance men (people always forget the maintenance of light craft is done at the shore base, which is why the numbers manning them always seem good. In fact, when you add in the rest, they are considerable more demanding of manpower than a larger ship)
Attack boats are actually quite inefficient compared to a larger draft as well, as they are small, unstable platforms. Rubbish gun platforms sinkable with a machine gun. Their real use is simple. Attack at night (that way you hopefully live long enough to get close to your targets), use your torpedoes on the convoy ships (nice, big, slow targets). Run away.
This they are good at. Any suggestion of a daylight escort mission against RN destroyers will have a long lineup of S-boat crews at the swiss border.
Their only chance of survival (and in this situation its still only a chance) is if covered by their own heavy ships. Which at this point in time are lying on the sea bottom off Norway...
I think that it is fairly clear that the Luftwaffe was using something very like skip bombing in 1940. I eventually found my copy of Cajus Bekker and it is on page 325-6 (curses on publishers who ask Google to remove content). My only doubt is that the 8 seconds fuse delay does in theory allow a slightly different mode in which a near miss sinks rather than skipping to explode under the ship. The text mentions only He-111s from KG 26 (X Corps) so I am not sure what method the Do-17s were using in the Channel in 1940.
You know... at the rate this is going, the Sealion might just join the ranks of the controversial-topics-that-must-not-be-named-lest-doing-so-provokes-a-flame-war. Yes, I hope that the good members of AH.com know what I'm talking about. In the event that you need clues, they are the P word, the G word and the A word.
Actually I'd have said the board has been fairly gentle with him.
He's really roasted himself - self basted, too!
He's really roasted himself - self basted, too!
No rules, but if one posts utter implausible crap with no sort of realistic backing beyond, "well, it just happens" an is unable or unwilling to respond to direct question that point out the utter folloy of the T/L, then one can reasonably expect to have some negitive feed-back as a result.
When one posts a scenario on, as I noted earlier, what is possibily the most thoughly reputiated WI of the 20th Century it is likely that the error of this will be noted. The likelihood that use of the Search Function will be recommended is also quite high. The odds of this outcome approach Unity the further one pushes an increasingly ill thought-out and devised T/L. If the poster is interested in discovering WHY the scenario is utter folly, the members here will go to great lengths to assist. That was NOT the case here.
There are actually Forums here where such posts are welcomed, ASB and the Writer's Forum being the most commonly used, although in the instant case it also might have worked in Shared Worlds. Where it would definitely NOT work is in the Post 1900 Forum since it it not just quite unlikey, it is, absent the intervention of a diety, quite impossible.
I would suggest that you may want to follow your own advise.
When one posts a scenario on, as I noted earlier, what is possibily the most thoughly reputiated WI of the 20th Century it is likely that the error of this will be noted. The likelihood that use of the Search Function will be recommended is also quite high. The odds of this outcome approach Unity the further one pushes an increasingly ill thought-out and devised T/L. If the poster is interested in discovering WHY the scenario is utter folly, the members here will go to great lengths to assist. That was NOT the case here.
There are actually Forums here where such posts are welcomed, ASB and the Writer's Forum being the most commonly used, although in the instant case it also might have worked in Shared Worlds. Where it would definitely NOT work is in the Post 1900 Forum since it it not just quite unlikey, it is, absent the intervention of a diety, quite impossible.
I would suggest that you may want to follow your own advise.
Oh well good bye to my reputation!
If we read Tooze's “Wages of Destruction” chapter 12 or (if unlike me you read German well) “Hitlers Strategie : Politik und Kriegführung 1940-1941” by Andreas Hillgruber, we are told that Hitler believed from the summer of 1940 that Germany would be faced with an attack from a very well armed Anglo-American alliance around 1943-4. I am not sure if that is true but it is a necessary belief if you don't want to accept that the Germans were extremely stupid not to hugely increase their weapon production over 1939-42. By contrast, Hitler almost certainly did not have that belief during late 1939 (see http://gateway.alternatehistory.com/essays/Sealion.html for an influential voice on this board). He did believe that he needed to defeat France in a short campaign but he probably believed that Britain would make peace if France fell and that America would not become involved in the war.
However, what if Hitler, ideally for this thread as early as September 1939, had misunderstood American politics and had begun to believe that Wall Street was dominated by Jewish money and could control US policy? Thus he believes that Roosevelt will respond to the fall of France by arranging an incident to bring the USA into the war. Britain will not need to make peace and the Anglo-American alliance will become a serious threat from autumn 1941, which would leave little time for Barbarossa. Thus he believes that not only must Germany defeat France in 1940 but must also invade Britain.
In fact, Germany had been planning its industries on the basis of a probable general war around 1943-4 since 1938 and I suspect that inertia may have played as big a role in German planning over 1939-41 as high level beliefs about an Anglo-American threat. However, let us go with Tooze that the German economy was being rationally run. If Hitler's beliefs change, he might have been able to change the direction of the plans and expand weapon production as well as expanding ammunition production. Thus it becomes just possible that Germany tries to prepare for a July 1940 Sealion from September 1939.
Almost certainly such preparations would have included building landing craft. Can we make the further leap that the German leadership realises that it must defeat the RN and that only an expanded Luftwaffe with greatly increased ability to attack warships can achieve this? If we can, we can expect a huge increase in the LW's anti-shipping equipment and training. Can we also expect a Norwegian Campaign aimed at damaging the RN and testing LW anti-shipping methods without greatly risking the KM's surface ships?
In the best case, can the KM after minimal Norwegian loses and working in collaboration with say 400 well trained anti-shipping aircraft, defeat or at least partially hold off the RN forces that are committed to the English Channel? Around July 4th 1940, the RN had Revenge at Plymouth, Queen Elizabeth being rebuilt at Portsmouth and Rodney, Nelson, Barham, Renown and Repulse at Scarpa. Perhaps air attack can disable the Revenge (and QE) either in daylight or using beam methods at night before the British find the invasion force. The aircraft of TF 58 could do it. Could a prepared LW stop the RN?
If we read Tooze's “Wages of Destruction” chapter 12 or (if unlike me you read German well) “Hitlers Strategie : Politik und Kriegführung 1940-1941” by Andreas Hillgruber, we are told that Hitler believed from the summer of 1940 that Germany would be faced with an attack from a very well armed Anglo-American alliance around 1943-4. I am not sure if that is true but it is a necessary belief if you don't want to accept that the Germans were extremely stupid not to hugely increase their weapon production over 1939-42. By contrast, Hitler almost certainly did not have that belief during late 1939 (see http://gateway.alternatehistory.com/essays/Sealion.html for an influential voice on this board). He did believe that he needed to defeat France in a short campaign but he probably believed that Britain would make peace if France fell and that America would not become involved in the war.
However, what if Hitler, ideally for this thread as early as September 1939, had misunderstood American politics and had begun to believe that Wall Street was dominated by Jewish money and could control US policy? Thus he believes that Roosevelt will respond to the fall of France by arranging an incident to bring the USA into the war. Britain will not need to make peace and the Anglo-American alliance will become a serious threat from autumn 1941, which would leave little time for Barbarossa. Thus he believes that not only must Germany defeat France in 1940 but must also invade Britain.
In fact, Germany had been planning its industries on the basis of a probable general war around 1943-4 since 1938 and I suspect that inertia may have played as big a role in German planning over 1939-41 as high level beliefs about an Anglo-American threat. However, let us go with Tooze that the German economy was being rationally run. If Hitler's beliefs change, he might have been able to change the direction of the plans and expand weapon production as well as expanding ammunition production. Thus it becomes just possible that Germany tries to prepare for a July 1940 Sealion from September 1939.
Almost certainly such preparations would have included building landing craft. Can we make the further leap that the German leadership realises that it must defeat the RN and that only an expanded Luftwaffe with greatly increased ability to attack warships can achieve this? If we can, we can expect a huge increase in the LW's anti-shipping equipment and training. Can we also expect a Norwegian Campaign aimed at damaging the RN and testing LW anti-shipping methods without greatly risking the KM's surface ships?
In the best case, can the KM after minimal Norwegian loses and working in collaboration with say 400 well trained anti-shipping aircraft, defeat or at least partially hold off the RN forces that are committed to the English Channel? Around July 4th 1940, the RN had Revenge at Plymouth, Queen Elizabeth being rebuilt at Portsmouth and Rodney, Nelson, Barham, Renown and Repulse at Scarpa. Perhaps air attack can disable the Revenge (and QE) either in daylight or using beam methods at night before the British find the invasion force. The aircraft of TF 58 could do it. Could a prepared LW stop the RN?
Last edited:
It could damage it. However, if whatever fighters survived the Battle of Britain are escorting torpedo bombers, what's escorting the bombers which need to bomb the British coastal guns, bridges and those soldiers which happen to be trying to push the Germans back to the ocean?
They may end up landing troops, the issue is resupplying them.
I have been thinking a little longer about the KM options for WW2 and how they relate to possible Sealions. The first point is that the KM went for a rapid expansion of its U-boat building. Thus the number of completed U-boats was 1939: 18, 1940: 50, 1941: 199 and 1942: 237 according to U-boat.net. Now that also meant that there was a great deal of yard rebuilding during the period from September 1939 to July 1940. If we assume that the Germany leadership believes that the war will be lost unless they successfully invade Britain during the summer of 1940, then there is less point trying to build submarines which will be completed after the middle of 1940. That does free up significant resources in addition to the ones identified early from the construction of industrial plant. The big question is which additional surface ships could be ready for service. It is fairly clear that the KM could have had Admiral Scheer and Leipzig ready for service but that isn't likely to decide a battle. Bismarck has been mentioned and is quite interesting. http://www.kbismarck.com/histoperi.html gives a timeline: 1st July 1936: Keel laid down, 14th February 1939: Launched, 24th August 1940: commissioned and finishes Baltic trials April 1941. For comparison, let us look at a case where resources were available. From Wikipedia, Iowa was ordered 1st July 1939, laid down 27th June 1940, launched 27th August 1942, and commissioned 22nd February 1943. She got underway on 27th August for Argentia, Newfoundland, to counter the threat of the German battleship Tirpitz. Thus for Iowa we have only 12 months between launching and being ready for action. Now I suspect that that is not a fair comparison because Iowa will have been launched with its main belt in place and there is some mention of attaching the external belt of Bismarck after launch, presumably in a dry dock although no entry is mentioned or perhaps the reference is only to the upper belt. However, it does look as if working 24 hours per day might have had Bismarck ready for a September invasion provided that the effort is also applied to its equipment. Progress with Tirpitz was even more leisurely than with Bismarck: 2nd November 1936: Laid down, 1st April 1939: Launched, 25th February 1941: commissioned. I seem to remember that labour was removed during 1940 to modify barges for Sealion. However, as the Baltic was not frozen and the Kiel Canal not blocked, the working up period was faster and Tirpitz was ready for combat by September and probably rather earlier. You might think that cruisers would be built quicker than battleships but Prinz Eugen was launched on 22nd August 1938 and Seydlitz was launched on 19th January 1939. Thus again both could have been ready for action by September. Finally, there are four destroyers, Z23-Z26, laid down 15th November 1938, 2nd January 1939, 15th February 1939 and 1st April 1939. The first, Z23, was commissioned 15th September 1940. Later ships in the class were built about six months quicker but I suspect that real urgency could also have these four ready for September.
Eternity, quadrupled from September 1940 to January 1941. By then the British had 30 fully equipped infantry divisions and 4 armored in England, this despite the several hundred tanks Churchill sent to Egypt.
Cockroach, a good point about overall RN losses being a concern but also consider what it means if for the next year or so the British can be certain that no invasion attempt is possible because of a September 1940 debacle for Germany. If the British can confidently move half the above forces from England to Greece or North Africa...
Mostlyharmless, the subject has been done to death already.
Beyond the fact that there will be no invasion attempt if the situation is so bad that rushing a single unfinished and marginally trained ship into action might make a difference you simply can not save time on training the crew of the ship.
And how does the Luftwaffe, given the endless conflict between Goering and Raeder, somehow have a force of dedicated anti-shipping aircraft greater in number than the entire force of Stukas?
Cockroach, a good point about overall RN losses being a concern but also consider what it means if for the next year or so the British can be certain that no invasion attempt is possible because of a September 1940 debacle for Germany. If the British can confidently move half the above forces from England to Greece or North Africa...
Mostlyharmless, the subject has been done to death already.
Beyond the fact that there will be no invasion attempt if the situation is so bad that rushing a single unfinished and marginally trained ship into action might make a difference you simply can not save time on training the crew of the ship.
And how does the Luftwaffe, given the endless conflict between Goering and Raeder, somehow have a force of dedicated anti-shipping aircraft greater in number than the entire force of Stukas?
Nice web site with the equipment levels available to the British post-Dunkirk
http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index....ost-dunkirk&catid=50:other-articles&Itemid=61
This doesn't include the weapon supplies sent from the USA in the period post Dunkirk, the majority of which was given to the Home Guard.
http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index....ost-dunkirk&catid=50:other-articles&Itemid=61
This doesn't include the weapon supplies sent from the USA in the period post Dunkirk, the majority of which was given to the Home Guard.
Good advice!! However, once you start rolling downhill, it is hard to stop! Also, I am no good at writing timelines especially when I do not know how they will end. However, I can always look at your expert judgements and follow the consensus.
The initial POD is that Hitler is crazy. “In Hitler's mind the threat of world war, the Americans and the Jews were inextricably intertwined” - Tooze “The Wages of Destruction”, Page 424. Confronted with war with Britain and France in September 1939, Hitler decides that he must defeat France first but that if he succeeds, America will enter the war rather than accept a German victory. He decides that the only hope is to follow up victory in France with an invasion of Britain before the British can raise and equip an army capable of offering significant resistance. He establishes a group headed by Jodl and including officers from the Luftwaffe, led by Hans Geisler, and Kriegsmarine, led by Wilhelm Marschall, as well as Speer as his personal representative on economic planning and asks Jodl to send a brief report to him on progress everyday. He also persuades Goering to accept that it will be necessary to sacrifice longer term development of war industries in favour of strengthening the Luftwaffe for operations in 1940, with the carrot that the LW can establish a Luftflotten sized anti-shipping force and prove that air power can dominate the sea.
Within a few weeks, the reports reach agreement on priorities: anti-shipping aircraft with fighters to escort them (I suspect that the LW might go wrong on this point by producing more Bf-110s rather than Bf-109s with drop tanks but that would depend on the particular LW officers involved), large surface warships and landing craft. S-boats and R-boats should also be built in large numbers but their limitations were recognised. Submarines were also to be completed as quickly as possible if they could be ready for use in 1940. Large numbers of transport gliders were also to be constructed and a large glider was also ordered that could transport light tanks or artillery. A bright officer pointed out that this would also need a specialist towing aircraft, so Heinkel promised to design a variant of the He-111 which could be produced quickly and Messerschmidt offered to add six Bramo-323 engines to the glider to produce a large transport.
Finding pilots for the additional aircraft proved to be more difficult than producing the aircraft. There were two issues: trainers and instructors. Paul Deichmann suggested that obsolete Ju-86 bombers could be rapidly assembled from existing parts to help train bomber pilots and this was agreed (OTL rejected). The provision of basic trainers was and remained a problem. Some were purchased from Italy at what many called a ridiculously high price, especially as the controls needed to be altered to German standards, and there was some increase in production at home. Instructors were made available by releasing many pilots from front line units once Hitler could be persuaded that weather and ammunition shortages made an early attack on France impossible but of course the same weather interfered with training.
The anti-shipping force was set up under Erhard Milch as Luftflotte 5 with Hans Geisler as his deputy. Fortunately, a good relationship existed between Admiral Marschall and Geisler, himself originally a naval officer, and this enabled an Air-Naval Liaison Office to ensure rapid communication between the services. In particular, aerial reconnaissance reports were read on arrival by naval officers and naval movements were passed to Luftwaffe units (preventing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wikinger). The last was the subject of some argument until Milch agreed to humour what was regarded as naval paranoia by adopting the KM's bigram system for sending the indicators of Enigma signals. Perhaps Milch was also happy that his signals were now secure from the rest of the Luftwaffe, although that advantage was lost on 1st July when the Luftwaffe generally adopted the new system.
Major Martin Harlinghausan, who had already developed the Swedish Turnip method of attacking ships, was a strong advocate of the development of torpedo bombers. However, it was soon clear that the German torpedoes developed by the KM for use by aircraft were essentially useless and Goering gave permission for the Luftwaffe to design their own. Both the Italian and the Japanese Naval Attachés admitted that their navies had designed better torpedoes but the question was, how to persuade them to release their designs to Germany. Jodl approached Hitler and received his permission to trade any necessary weapon or industrial secrets and the result was that radars such as the Wurzburg and the design of tools needed to build fuel injectors for aero-engines were soon given to both nations. The Italians agreed in addition to carry the equipment to and from Japan on a cruiser, which was official showing the flag in support of the Italian forces in China. In fact, Japanese blueprints were also sent in multiple parts chained to diplomats wrists via the USSR. Even after examining two reasonable designs, it was hard to design and produce a satisfactory torpedo and too few were available to play any role in the Norwegian invasion. As he had for the previous two month, Martin Harlinghausan spent most of April watching his pilots practise torpedo bombing. All the torpedoes were recovered and those that had not run true were examined and orders were sent to strengthen parts that failed, which did nothing to speed up production. Oddly the biggest single improvement arose quite accidentally when the cine film that had been taken to improve the training was reviewed. It was noticed that the angle of entry to the water correlated well with whether the torpedo ran true, so a wooden tail shroud was added to try to ensure a good, nose first, entry angle and prevent roll. Eventually the combination of strengthened structure and the wooden additions produced a torpedo that could be dropped from 1,500 metres at 350 knots at the expense of additional weight and drag. Meanwhile rigorous tests of Italian, Japanese and German model fuses showed the superiority of the new Italian models especially to any of the German designs. This information was passed to the KM by several routes and after some reluctance began to be accepted. The Luftwaffe's torpedoes had entered production early in 1940 but remained mired in modification until the end of May. Only in June 1940 did torpedoes arrive that were immediately fit for use although older torpedoes were frantically modified and around 400 torpedoes were available on July 1st 1940 with a further 100 arriving during the next week of which more than half came from modification workshops.
One difficult choice for Major Harlinghausan was whether to recommend the He-111 or the Ju-88 as the main torpedo carrier. The He-111 was easier to control near the water but the Ju-88 had better performance after it had dropped its torpedoes and could also use its dive brakes to allow a faster initial approach. To make things more complicated, Milch himself had become involved by criticising the Ju-88's flying characteristics, so that there was some temptation to wait for the extend wings of the A5 variant. Fortunately, the improvement in the strength of the torpedoes eased the problems. Neither dive brakes nor flying very near the water were now necessary, so both aircraft became satisfactory carriers. Finally, to skip ahead and apparently to mock the idea that production had been rationalized, 12 Fieseler Fi-167s arrived as the Battle of France was ending to equip the carrier Graf Zeppelin, whose construction had been suspended the previous September! Major Harlinghausan realised that these aircraft did have unique advantages and formed them into a night attack Stafel to use their very low stalling speed.
The Norwegian campaign was launched on 9th April 1940 in response to the British Operation Wilfred. It was aimed at trying to sink as many British warships as possible and completing the training of the anti-shipping force including finding out which tactics worked best. Naturally, there was a great reluctance to risk the KM surface ships although Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were dispatched far north of the main landings at Bergen, Kristiansand and near Oslo at a site advised by Quisling (together with seizing Sola airfield using paratroops). Despite the commitment to low risk, the KM still lost two light cruisers in the first few days although the strong destroyer escorts did manage to frustrate some submarine attacks on returning ships. Apart from the units involved in training, almost all of Luftflotte 5 was committed and their 9th April attacks on both a major portion of the British fleet, including the battleships Rodney and Valiant, and on a detached force of cruisers and destroyers was their first opportunity to show the results of their training. Much the most effective attack was by 40 Ju-87R flying from the newly captured field at Aarhus against the cruisers off Bergen, which score hits on the cruisers Southampton, Glasgow and Sheffield and the destroyer Gurkha. Southampton, hit at least four times, and Gurkha sank. The two engined bombers meanwhile had hit both Rodney and Valiant, although without causing serious damage. As a result of these attacks, the British abandoned all attempts to use surface forces to prevent German forces sailing to Oslo and, by mid May, the German forces were advancing towards Trondheim and their Anglo-French-Norwegian opponents were suffering under the weight of German aerial superiority.
Of course, by mid May, the world's eyes were on France rather than Norway although it is hardly necessary for me to tell that well known story. Perhaps the most obvious point where the plans for the invasion of Britain collided with the need to win the Battle of France occurred on the morning of 24th May when Hitler, desperate to ensure that the BEF was captured in France, overrode von Rundstedt's order to Guderian to halt at the Aa river and ordered 1st Pz to take Dunkirk, leading to severe street fighting and heavy loses when the division was also bombarded by the Allied Navies. Hitler's interference was heavily criticised within OKH and it has been noted that the Luftwaffe could have probably prevented any evacuation. The fighting around Dunkirk is also notable for the first use of torpedo bombers by the Luftwaffe, although the torpedoes had not been fully modified, and the use of the very rapidly built and trained force of S-boats. Ironically, the most effective weapon against the allied shipping on that occasion proved to be the Ju-87s of Luftflotte 2 and 3 which had hardly practised attacking ships!
Luftflotte 5 was in action against the RN at the same time as the Dunkirk fighting when they attacked shipping off Central Norway, which was evacuating Anglo-French forces from the Trondheim area. Several units were initial taken to Narvik. However, with the fall of France, the British staffs were finally able to persuade Churchill that Narvik could not be held and a further evacuation followed in late June, this time with fewer casualties partly because the principle anti-shipping units of the LW were being withdrawn from Norway for action elsewhere.
It was unusual for senior officers of the Wehrmacht to indulge in philosophical reflections on the significance of their contributions but the morning of the 4th July 1940 found Colonel-General Jodl and General Geisler together eating cheese on rye bread with, a great luxury, real coffee. While either could surely have found important activities, nothing seemed more urgent than waiting for news.
“Everything left harbour last night?” began Jodl.
“So the Navy tells me” responded Geisler.
“What has the Sealion planning team really achieved over its ten months?” asked Jodl
“Well apart from making the detailed plans for Sealion, we have probably driven the construction of about an additional 800 landing craft, 200 S-boats, 800 gliders and over one thousand aircraft together with producing pilots to fly them.”
“How do you calculate a thousand aircraft?”
“There must be almost a thousand extra combat aircraft even excluding trainers and transports. Nearly 400 extra He-111s, 200 extra Ju-87s – mostly Rs, 200 extra Bf-109s and a few extra Ju-88s, Do-17s and Bf-110s.”
“And we have lost all the new factories and oil plants that we will need if this invasion does not succeed not to mention, as Doenitz does every time we see him, well over 100 submarines that could have been built over the next year!”
“And Bismarck, Tirpitz, Prinz Eugen and Seydlitz are still not quite ready despite all our efforts.”
At which moment, a young officer approached with the totally unexpected news that the British had started to take over the French fleet in Britain and that a battle squadron was threatening Mers el Kebir.
Luftflotte 5 would never have done such damage, a contingent of @150aircraft being a tiny fraction of the air power actually sent to Norway OTL. Indeed, I doubt the German effort against Norway would succeed given such weak support.
Also the Stuka was all but worthless against shipping in general and warships in particular.
Neither was there any reason for Hitler to go around countermanding orders of no apparent significance regarding Dunkirk. No one in Germany even considered Dunkirk to be any relevance at the time, Rommel in particular mocking the idea of even 100,000 Allied troops being evacuated.
German generals who survived the war, of course, discovered a need to rewrite their journals and attempt to rewrite history to show how it was all Hitler's fault.
With all these continuing errors I hope you enjoy being shredded.
Also the Stuka was all but worthless against shipping in general and warships in particular.
Neither was there any reason for Hitler to go around countermanding orders of no apparent significance regarding Dunkirk. No one in Germany even considered Dunkirk to be any relevance at the time, Rommel in particular mocking the idea of even 100,000 Allied troops being evacuated.
German generals who survived the war, of course, discovered a need to rewrite their journals and attempt to rewrite history to show how it was all Hitler's fault.
With all these continuing errors I hope you enjoy being shredded.
Also the Stuka was all but worthless against shipping in general and warships in particular.
From minelayers to destroyers to cruisers to battleships, the Stuka was one of the most effective dive bombers in an anti-shipping role. I'm sure Mountbatten would agree.
Not sure how they are going to get all those extra aircraft, what isnt being built, and when loses its engines to the new planes?
And you dont develop a new airdroppable torpedo from scratch and get it working in months.
And you dont develop a new airdroppable torpedo from scratch and get it working in months.
The aircraft are not such a problem. Heinkel's factory, for example, was not running 24 hours a day and He-111 production doubled in 1942 with foreign workers.
However, you may have found a serious weakness in my ideas with the torpedoes
. I don't have a good sense of how long it would take to establish production of a foreign torpedo. I had believed that the Germans were capable of producing similar weapons rapidly when under pressure although they also tended not to work initially. Thus the Biber midget submarine was ordered on 29th May 1944 and 22 boats were launched on 30th August for their first operation of which only 14 left the harbour and only two reached the area of operation according to Wikipedia. However, the Biber would have been built using parts that were already in production. The problem with a torpedo is its motor which has to fit into a small cylinder. If we look at the production of foreign aero-engines, the shortest time between agreement and the delivery of the first engine may have been the 11 months seen for the Packard Merlin. The Germans only had one 45 cm motor in production in 1939 which was for their F5 aerial torpedo and which had low power. Their choices were to both expand production of that motor and improve it, to buy Italian motors if they were available or to design a 21” (53 cm) aerial torpedo using a version of the G7a motor. In 1941, they decided to buy Italian torpedoes while redesigning their own to produce the F5b and it probably took them over a year from starting the redesign to using the F5b in combat. Sufficient funds might perhaps have bought 500 Italian motors because the Italians also used 45 cm torpedoes for MTBs. If one of these ideas don't work my timeline has to move to the ASB zone .