Jeez. Stop with the barracks-room history lesson and put the CS Lewis away, do us all a favor.
Could there have been a way to invade England?
- Thread starter Gan
- Start date
Jeez. Stop with the barracks-room history lesson and put the CS Lewis away, do us all a favor.
No, but I'm given to understand it significantly reduced the numbers lost to such. At first they tried generating permanent magnetic-neutral fields, but that cost too much (you needed a coil of copper for each ship), so they developed the degaussing process that would keep a ship mostly safe for a few months before it build up a signature again, which provided some margin of error.Can I assume from this that no British ships, destroyer and down, were mined after November 1939, then........
Fred
Of course, if they get a few days of warning I wouldn't expect the British to hold back from doing the whole fleet, so those big minefields to be particularly troublesome.
The Germans used a mixture of mine types though ... not just magnetic ...
31st August 1940
The 20th Destroyer Flotilla, consisting of destroyers ESK, EXPRESS, IVANHOE, ICARUS and INTREPID departed the Humber escorted by destroyers KELVIN, JUPITER, VORTIGERN to lay minefield CBX.5 off Vlieland. The minesweeper SALAMANDER swept the Humber entrance before their departure.
At 22:50 an aircraft reported a large number of enemy vessels to the north of Terschelling steering west. The Destroyers were ordered to jettison their mines and attack the German vessels.
Forty miles northwest of Texel, the destroyer EXPRESS struck a mine damaging the ship and mortally wounding the Captain and killing 46 others. During the rescue mission the destroyers ESK and IVANHOE also struck mines, at 2325 and 0051 on 1 September, respectively.
The destroyer ESK was sunk outright by the mine explosion with only two crew from ESK being rescued by British ships and over 130 crew lost. The destroyer IVANHOE was badly damaged, but was able to proceed under her own power for a time.
The following morning the destroyers Jupiter and Kelvin went to search for the damaged ships whilst VORTIGERN was left to mark the safe gap in the minefield. The destroyers GARTH and HAMBLEDON were also sent. Minesweepers LEDA and SALTASH, tugs ST CYRUS, IRISHMAN, NORMAN, WHEELDON, motor torpedo boats MTB.29, MTB.30, MTB.31 went to assist destroyer EXPRESS.
In the meantime German aircraft had rescued over fifty British seamen from the sea who were transported back to Norway to become POW.
When the destroyer GARTH eventually found the IVANHOE it was decided the ship was so badly damaged that it could not be saved and was scuttled by a single torpedo fired by GARTH.
The destroyer EXPRESS was safely towed back to Hull and was repaired by 30 September 1941.
Fortunately this incident occurred in the waters of the North Sea with little or no German air cover. I dread to think what may have happened in a location (such as the Straits of Dover) where the German’s could have been on them within 15 minutes of sighting, where there were many hundreds of bombers and dive bombers sitting, waiting for the radar signal that would allow them to continually attack for hours.
Unless I'm missing something I'm a little confused by what this has to do with the landing beaches. This weapon was to be used at specific locations inland and would have been a huge drain on resources if used on the beaches for what was essentially a one shot weapon.
I know I've posted this before but it should be of some interest to those wanting to know more about the threat of the "Seas on Fire" myth.
http://www.psywarrior.com/DeceptionH.html
Historical examples of the RN doing this? After that's established, we can look at the operational problem of long range naval intercepts at 12kt.
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Examples that flatly contradict the talking point one is trying to make never are "good" ones.
There was any reason to do so. If your country is being invaded however, sacrificing merchant shipping and a skeleton crew probably seems likely a reasonable deal.
teg
hipper
Banned
Well on Ian's favourite invasion date the Rn had 3 merchant ships with skeleton crews prepared to throw themselves into german ports, sailing through a minefield seems easy by comparison
Regards hipper
I have to say it sounds like something the RN would do ... I'm pretty certain I read somewhere they did it with destroyers at Scapa. Couple of points on this though, why not just send minesweepers ahead of the fleet(?) and it would still be a risky business no matter what they did as the fleet would have to drop to half speed at least and would be in column formation with nowhere to go, so they would be highly vulnerable whilst passing through the mines.
I was really hoping someone could answer this, it's a pretty basic requirement for an invasion, but if there is no answer so be it.
Can't cite any specific use of ships in such a manner by the RN, but certainly the Germans made extensive use of lower value (worn out, already damaged, oselete, etc.) Merchant vessels as "mine bumpers", so it's not an implausible move.
sharlin
Banned
Thats actually a bloody good question, I would assume they would be hauled in by ropes and weights on the sand (anchor possibly?) to disgorge their troops or hauled alongside one with an engine so the men can move from the unpowered one to the one that has managed to beach itself. If you get close enough to the beaches the motion of the waves will hopefully pull you inshore so they could be relying on that, the Tugs could go full ahead and break the tow, relying on momentum and the waves but thats bloody tricky to pull off.
If the tug was destroyed...then you have the fun of reorganising after the attack, if you have not drifted off too far in the melee and confusion of the fight another tow would have to be put on by a Tug if one was available.
Sounds like an impossible task one that would inevitably heap chaos on chaos.
Of course the unpowered barges had to be taken back to France somehow.
Well regarding the tide taking them onto the beach it could take ages and they would be sitting ducks.
In the initial waves only powered barges would be used ... towed to a position off the coast and let loose to beach themselves under their own steam.
You must also remember that the assault wave was going to be landed in motor boats, just over 8000 men with support from floating and underwater tank, so the barges would hopefully be landed on reasonably secure beaches. I'm not saying they would be but that was the hope.
sharlin
Banned
The whole convoy would be sitting ducks really. Any unsuppressed costal defences missed by the Luftwaffe would be able to wreak a fearful toll on a mass of ships slowly plodding inshore at 4 - 5 knots at most and yes it would be chaotic at best trying to re-organise after say a surface attack, next to impossible would be more likely.
This could lead to a lot of beached motor boats, or a lot of German troops plungin into 6 foot of sea water and dropping there machine guns.
Just how many motor boats have the Nazis got i thought they were going to be coordinating things.
Just how many motor boats have the Nazis got i thought they were going to be coordinating things.
Only 800 of the barges were powered, some insufficiently, these would not have been enough for the first wave leaving the question of how the unpowered barges were to make it to the beach still unanswered.
hipper
Banned
The initial german assaults were truly going to be men against fire, men crossing the channel in german river police motorboats, and very light assault boats dropped from german escorts. The amount of fire support they would get was minimal and any intervention by the RN at the landing site would doom the landing attempt.