It wasn't even carried out. If anything its hilariously ambitious. It was simply a plan and yet it brings up so many emotions on this site. Why is that?
Banned, for bringing up the Unmentionable Seamammal that was Sealion.
usertron2020 Banned.
Same reason.
I think a lot of the problems people have with any realistic non ASB scenario come down to the fact that it totally ignores Britain's ability to resist it
I often see scenarios where some how both the RAF and RN are defeated or degraded or fooled to the point that allows such an invasion to happen - when History shows us that this was so improbable as to be virtually Impossible.
The defeat of the RAF was not impossible, if you define "defeat" as forcing 11 Group to redeploy to north of the Thames River, thereby giving the Luftwaffe a relative level of air superiority over the English Channel, and air parity over SW England south of the Thames. In terms of providable air support, this means a potential CAP over the invasion barges, and even the Stukas and Me-110s could be reintroduced for strikes against coastal defenses.
IMO the rock whereupon ALL Sealion threads wreck themselves is the Royal Navy. German minefields, E-Boats, and U-Boats are not going to stop the Home Fleet, otherwise what is it there for? And totally non-Churchillian caution (even rank timidity) regarding sending in the fleet to annihilate the invasion barges is not going to happen either.
Then assuming this highly improbable pair of situations have been achieved the relatively tiny German Navy and Merchant marine is going to deliver more troops than were landed on D-Day and win despite no operational or 'tribal' experience of amphibious ops and being grossly out numbered by the British Army (who despite shortages and losses due to Dunkirk would still have out gunned the relatively lightly equipped German assaulting units and have all the advantages of mobility and Supplies) when they did land.
The sense of an impending invasion promotes domestic unity.
What really gets my goat is that the British Army is often portrayed as a bunch of poorly armed Hobbits with little or no fighting ability despite evidence to the contrary.
This portrayal was for the contemporary need to show Britain to be on their last legs. If all they've got is pitchforks to fight with, then they will need more weapons (like the 800,000 Springfields delivered in October 1940 for the Home Guard) to "save themselves".
How Germans managed that with the RN still intact still boggles my mind.
Norwegian disunity and last minute fumfumerring didn't help either (and thank you Quisling
)
Weather, basically - and luck. It's notable that despite all that luck, about half the Kriegsmarine was sunk or rendered combat ineffective for months.
The Germans DID have the advantage of a short jump into Oslo, facing defenses that mostly hadn't been updated since 1895! Even then, the Germans got slaughtered there and would have lost the battle were it not for the paratroopers seizing vital airfields to the north.
Winston as 1st Sea Lord sticking his oar where it wasn't wanted or needed didn't help things
Correction: He was First Lord of the Admiralty, not First Sea Lord
Hitler fully planned to invade Norway anyway, and the damage the Kriegsmarine took to its blue water navy it never truly recovered from. Not at least in terms of its light units.
Any other man would have been sent to Coventry and not trusted with a paper round after his interference with the operation
What did Lincoln say of a particular general when he lost a battle, or suffered a particularly bloody victory? "He fights"
Ulysses S. Grant was a far better military commander than Winston Churchill, but...
LOL and he was made Prime Minister!
...Prime Minister Churchill was far better at leading his country than Grant ever was. You play to your strengths.
In May of 1940, Britain's potential leadership bench was all but empty. Every other possible candidate was either covered in Appeasement shit, was still too young, was inexperienced, was a hoary old survivor from WWI, was a peer who could not lead from the House of Commons, or was a combination of any number of these factors.
Only Winston Churchill was clean as a newborn baby's behind. And if Norway proved how unprepared Britain was for modern warfare, just who do you think had been screaming for increased defense appropriations ever since Hitler came to power? So even with defeat in Norway, Winston found his national standing to actually be increased! One back-bencher, joining in the chorus (post-Norway) demanding Chamberlain's resignation, declared:
"This government is using the First Lord of the Admiralty as a bomb shelter to protect itself from the righteous wrath of this House, knowing full well that the Right Honourable member for Epping can in no way even remotely be held responsible for the disasters that have struck us in recent weeks!"
[1]
1] I confess due to failing memory that I am paraphrasing here, but the irony is that I DO recall that the back-bencher in question had been a bigtime appeaser himself