Glossary of Sealion Threads

Mostlyharmless

Equuleus said:
With a PoD being after the nazis assume power, make a non ASB operation Sealion happen and succeed. Bonus points for it happening in 1940.
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I am not sure if the Sticky is working as intended.

Mostlyharmless said:

.....Of course it gets easier, if you start the divergence earlier. Ultimate Challenge: Unternehmen Seelöwe suggested that January 1940 is too late for a successful Sealion POD. I tried with a POD of 3rd September 1939 in Sealion Interview and didn't quite convince myself although it was fun. The basic idea was to use magnetic mines as a surprise weapon. Berra suggested a POD of the British not developing radar in My Attempt on a Successful Sealion but again did not convince everyone.
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I picked out the threads Sealion Interview and My Attempt on a Successful Sealion as examples of attempts at non ASB Sealions. Do the experts who have been here longer remember better attempts?
As mentioned above, there is a need for a non ASB resource for writers to use as a back story. Thus in my try, I tried to keep history as close as possible to OTL with few changes to NAZI politics and kept the conclusion very vague.
 

jkay

There's also my timeline on the most dangerous possible Hitler, Hitler's Republic. It goes back to 1901 to change his goalset growing up as a kid to make it all plausible. The Germans've just won the Battle of Britain, and are started sinking the Royal Navy, the biggest obstacle to a UK invasion.

There's been little protest on my thread, so I think its readership must agree with its broad plausibility.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
Depends what you're trying to do with this thread...

Thanks for including my 2 threads of the how and interesting variety, I'd forgotten they existed!

I did write a Nazi Trilogy based on a successful Sealion but since it was from a dream there was little focus on the how, only that they had

I also did a timeline once where Imperial Germany invades S England, not directly relevant but a lot of the same issues were discussed. Think this was probably within The Eleventh Hour sequence

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

BlairWitch749

Banned
Once I get some free time, Der Manstein Kommt version 2.0 will be attempted... I admit failure in the first one... I've moved the POD back to 1937 to make it more functional
 

Evan

I started a thread once where I assumed the alien space bats transport the Nazi army (with supplies) across the Channel and then asked what happened next. A couple ideas were advanced, but discussion unfortunately petered out.
 

teg

The irony of Operatio Sealion threads, is that the most plausiable of the lot is Reverse Sealion
 
Nassirisimo

Nassirisimo

teg said:
The irony of Operatio Sealion threads, is that the most plausiable of the lot is Reverse Sealion
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Im assuming thats with American help of course. The British could probebly never hope to take on Nazi Germany in France alone without lots of help.
 

jkay

Sealion Show tomorrow

Sealion Show tomorrow.

We'll start duking it out on Sealion plausibility late tomorrow in Hitler's Republic.
 

fredleander

teg said:
The irony of Operatio Sealion threads, is that the most plausiable of the lot is Reverse Sealion
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I often wonder - since the Germans could not obtain air superiority over the Channel, and the Royal Navy was ever-present and undefeatable in the same area and the Luftwaffe could not hit moving naval targets and the Dunkirk evacuation was a sucess.....why did the British pull out of France at all? I mean, why not establish and fortify a bridgehead around Dunkirk - like Tobruk? Since they had full control of the Channel supplying a bridgehead force should not be more difficult than evacuating their large, mostly intact, forces around Dunkirk. There was a lot of French forces to help them there, too. Instead of first evacuating and then land other British forces along the western part of the Channel.

The upkeep of such a bridgehead would need the Germans to eradicate it before they eventually could jump the Channel. Which would be a good defensive strategy. Not to mention the fact that it would have been a great help to the French. The decent thing to do, actually.
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Mostlyharmless

resources

I have been making lists of resources on Sealion and decided to post it here rather than in books and media in the interest of keeping the pinnipeds together in a colony.

Firstly, there is an impressive list of books and other information on Sealion at the site of the Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team (CART) http://www.coleshillhouse.com/the-threat-from-germany-operation-sealion.php. Another shorter list can be found on the site of a writer of an alternate history story on Sealion http://www.stevebarrettbooks.com/bground.htm. Another source of online information is at http://www.da.mod.uk/colleges/jscsc/jscsc-library/archives/operation-sealion. Also http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/documents/Bracknell%20No%201%20-%20Battle%20of%20Britain.pdf.

While searching, I noticed that some people have been rather devious. A study by a trio of American officers showing that smoking enough joints can convince one that a successful Sealion is possible is offered by Amazon for a mere $19.05 and was mentioned in this thread
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=194054. However, it can also be downloaded free from http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA421637. It is worth searching that site for anything that looks as if it could be a US military study before spending any money.

I also found a candidate for the longest Sealion thread on the internet at http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38099 . Does it have any rivals?

ps. I also found a few books not listed by CART or Steve Barrett
“Operation Sealion” edited by Richard Cox
“The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality” by Richard Overy
“Invasion, 1940: Did the Battle of Britain Alone Stop Hitler?” by Derek Robinson
“Don't Panic: Britain Prepares for Invasion 1940” by Mark Rowe
“British anti-invasion defences 1940-1945: a pocket reference guide” by Austin J. Ruddy
“War from the Top: German and British Military Decision Making During World War II” by Alan F. Wilt

pps. Dare I exploit the longer edit time to add some extra bedtime reading:

“Silent Victory” by Duncan Grinnell-Milne
“1940: Myth and Reality” by Clive Ponting

Those were recommended by “RF” in a thread at Naval History Forums http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3814.

There were also a group of online essays at the Royal United Services Institue http://www.rusi.org. These include http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/66-67_Gordon.pdf and three essays which I found using the Wayback machine http://web.archive.org/web/20080705...iences/history/commentary/ref:C4538DAE3AB61C/, http://web.archive.org/web/20080828...iences/history/commentary/ref:C4538E034F182D/ and http://web.archive.org/web/20080918...iences/history/commentary/ref:C4538E2591AE95/ although they may still be somewhere on the RUSI site.
 
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Major Major

Another Board Takes up the Unmentionable Sea Mammal

Strangely enough, in the context of a discussion of the need (or lack thereof) to nuke Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki. The citations begin about page seven of this thread from the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum . . .

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=223836

And along about page 8 the usual hypotheses begin. I'm waiting for the infamous 300-ton multi-purpose boats that can be knocked up on boat-launching slips along rivers, the iron discipline with which victories can be won, the freighters being run ashore, the car ferries . . .
 

Michele

fredleander said:
I often wonder - since the Germans could not obtain air superiority over the Channel, and the Royal Navy was ever-present and undefeatable in the same area and the Luftwaffe could not hit moving naval targets and the Dunkirk evacuation was a sucess.....why did the British pull out of France at all? I mean, why not establish and fortify a bridgehead around Dunkirk - like Tobruk? Since they had full control of the Channel supplying a bridgehead force should not be more difficult than evacuating their large, mostly intact, forces around Dunkirk. There was a lot of French forces to help them there, too. Instead of first evacuating and then land other British forces along the western part of the Channel.

The upkeep of such a bridgehead would need the Germans to eradicate it before they eventually could jump the Channel. Which would be a good defensive strategy. Not to mention the fact that it would have been a great help to the French. The decent thing to do, actually.
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For starters, unloading ships in Dunkirk are non-moving naval targets. The Luftwaffe could hit even nimble destroyers, if they were stationary or nearly so, as evidenced by their historical track record for that year.

Then, unloading ships in Dunkirk requires wharves and other big non-moving targets, which the Luftwaffe could hit. Actually, the Heer's artillery could, too.

Finally, Germany could not achieve air superiority in 1940 - over Southern England. The Channel is another kettle of fish. And Dunkirk, or any place on the French coast, yet another.
In the second half of 1941, Fighter Command, under its new leadership, carried out offensive operations against the French coast. They had a puny number of bombers to serve as bait, and they chiefly went there so that their government could tell the Soviets, and its own internal public opinion, that they were keeping the Germans, and in particular the Luftwaffe, committed.
Actually the Luftwaffe fighters on the Channel never numbered more than
some 200. The British fighter pilots overclaimed, as it always happened to both sides, so that Fighter Command thought they were doing pretty well: yes, they lost 411 fighters of their own over that period, but they claimed some 700 German ones downed.
The actual figure was 154.

That did not really matter, as the Germans did not care a whole lot about puny numbers of bombers bombing trivial targets on French soil, and the British were doing all of that mostly for the above mentioned political-diplomatic reason.

Now guess what the results would be if the point had been reducing a British-held bridgehead, not with the Germans having just some 200 fighters but the whole Luftwaffe.

The single most important factor you have been overlooking is, of course, radar. It was an all-important factor in the defensive battles over Southern England. It would have very limited influence on air battles over Dunkirk, just as it had very limited influence during the Circus operations.
 
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