I think you'll find that the British won that one, I mean, even as a raid it wasn't successful, since most of the force got captured.
Why is sealion such a sensitive issue on this forum?
- Thread starter Emperor Palpatine
- Start date
Has anyone done an ASB TL where all of Britain's navy goes POOF?
(It disappears once Germany wants it to in WWII)
(It disappears once Germany wants it to in WWII)
usertron2020
Donor
Wheeze resigned from government and went into the trenches wheeze
Gasp promoted the development of tanks gasp
Choke re-entered politics postwar to sterling service choke
Hack left shadow government over policy hack
Ugh spent 10 years as Britain's Cassandra warning of Hitler ugh
Spit Upon getting the Admiralty, lit fires under everyone's tails spit
Dribble after the sinking the Graf Spee, turned it into a smash propaganda success dribble
Barf Norway cluster-fucked by Norwegians and an interfering PM barf
And MOST of all...
Sniff By 1940 Gallipoli had happened a quarter century before sniff
1] I myself once game-tested a scenario for the escape of the Bismarck that involved no changes save that instead of trying to escape British observation the German commander continually ordered direct attacks. The end result being that while both the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen were lost the entire Home Fleet was wiped out!
[2]2] Four destroyers, three light cruisers, Norfolk & Suffolk, the Victorious, Hood, Prince of Wales, and Rodney all sunk; with King George V in drydock under repair for 18 months. Force H, Dorestshire, and the R-class battleship (Ramilles?) did not arrive in time. The British never altered their own strategy of never allowing the German fleet to get out of sight, and since they did not expect the Germans to charge, were destroyed piece-meal.
You never know...
And the very wanking itself OTL led to both the Germans and Japanese making war plans that could best be described as monuments of stupid overconfidence.
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The closest I've seen is someone make George Lansbury British Prime Minister in the 1930s, and have him sell the Royal Navy to the Americans.
Actually, that one wasn't Churchill's fault, he'd wanted it to be a navy only affair (with very limited landings), but unfortunately, minesweepers with civilian crews weren't the best choice, leading to the loss of six pre-dreadnoughts. The Gallipoli Campaign as a whole was Kitchener's fault.
I did one once where both sides armed warships and aircraft disappeared. Turns out that without any support the Germans still wouldn't have gotten very far, what the British now having artillery and the Germans not.
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usertron2020
Donor
But if you're an Aussie still pissed at Churchill spending WWII deploying the Empire's forces as if Australia didn't exist (true), then you don't give a damn about the potential culpability of anyone else regarding Gallipoli.
Saphroneth
Banned
Thanks. I'd have put it as my sig, but it's about three times too long.
Incidentally, notice that none of the "horsemen" are riding horses? That's deliberate, too - very few people like to remember that the Wehrmacht was largely horse drawn.
For a certain definition of success.
Feasted for a few days and caused a run on the Bank of England (which was forced to issue paper banknotes for the first time).
Then got rounded up by the local yeomanry and Jemima with a pitchfork.
???? Fishguard is not in England, it's in Wales, and that was the ONLY place they landed. It wasn't an impressive force, it was a rabble that surrendered to the first force of militia that they encountered. Where on earth did you get the above???
An "impressive force" of 1000 men?
And "successfully"?
By this token, the Dieppe landing was a marvellous victory.
I'd be annoyed with a what-if where Hitler steps across the tracks, waits for a running train, and stops it with his fist, yes.
That does not mean that, if Hitler were more nutty than he was, he could not step across the tracks - but to die under the train, naturally.
For an example of a Sealion thread that did not cause much of a ruckus, and in which the Germans did land (albeit to call that a "successful" landing would require a special definition of success), you can look up my old job:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=103866
And just for the record:
1. I am not British,
2. This is not a story overly favoring the British, given that indeed it posits that the Luftwaffe can work better than historically and the Germans do get to land.
Probably because every once in a while, someone comes up with a notion that Sealion could have worked. And then posts a new thread, without ever checking the sticky.
But it is not that Sealion cannot be rationally discussed. Check out the thread(s) by Ian Hathaway who went on to, well..., show that it would not exactly be a walk in the park for the RN (as is sometimes imagined), though without any doubt, they would prevail.
When you say sensitive, it sounds like it shouldn't be discussed or ever mentioned. And I think that is not the case.
Or alternately, because that was the reason why the whole war was started. That was the long-term objective of the one man who most wanted the whole war and had the power to start it.
So it does make sense. The alternative would be like Henry VIII not starting the Church of England because after all he does not feel the need of a heir.
Naturally you can replace Hitler, but if so, then there is no one wanting the war to start.
Or, finally, you can have Hitler in power in Germany until the war starts, then do away with him and replace him with someone else. Now, either that someone else has some sense, and the war still ends with a German defeat, albeit a negotiated one and with much less death and destruction; or that someone else is a dimwit, and then even if does not go to war against the USSR then Germany is defeated by the sheer economic unsustainability of its position.
Naturally there always is the possibility that if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, then it happens the other way around. In 1943, Germany being broke and its occupied Europe near starvation, the Red Army fully refurnished, reequipped, retrained and reofficered, Stalin finally accepts the long-standing British invitation. He tries to convince the Romanians, say, to a Baltic-like "agreement", Germany reacts, and there you go.
After all, there are many paths to Allied victory, and that's because there were very good reasons for the Allies to win, one way or another.
It's a bit of a weird topic to be honest. There are so many unanswered questions and misconceptions floating around. Even though my own personal opinion, one which I have posted time and time again, is that Sealion is impossible purely because the Royal Navy is so strong that reinforcing and resupplying any forces landed would be impossible, certain people always assume that as soon as a Sealion thread is started the person starting the thread wants to prove a German victory is possible.
I feel there are far too many people ready to try their hardest to shut down any discussion about Sealion that it actually puts other members off joining the debate. If people don't want to talk about the topic they have the option not to contribute and the thread can continue just as well if not better without them. Pointing people to the "sticky" is also pointless as it is so full of holes and unanswered questions that it is next to useless as a serious source of information.
Sorry, just my opinion.
I feel there are far too many people ready to try their hardest to shut down any discussion about Sealion that it actually puts other members off joining the debate. If people don't want to talk about the topic they have the option not to contribute and the thread can continue just as well if not better without them. Pointing people to the "sticky" is also pointless as it is so full of holes and unanswered questions that it is next to useless as a serious source of information.
Sorry, just my opinion.
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I agree that some people can get a bit OTT when it comes to Sealion. The problem is that in many cases they've had terrible timelines inflicted on them that made them want to headbutt the nearest wall in order to kill off the memories - Ovaron's dreadful 'The Raid on Scapa Flow' is a case in point, where he was building up to a successful Sealion just before he mercifully walked away from the forum because people stopped posting 'What??????" comments.
1) It's AH cliche number 3 or 4 close behind "Rebels win ACW" and "Generic Axis victory due to blatant handwaving".
2) The evidence reasonably establishes it's at best a long shot, and at worst almost ASB. While it's possible to discuss where exactly on that spectrum it lies (Is it a 10% chance or a 0.0000000000001% chance?), there's nothing to seriously challenge the overall assessment.
3) A lot of Seelowe threads consist of random n00b wandering in going "LOL wot if Seelowe?" without an iota of thought. Or even worse, putting forwards a "Hitler moves his pieces while the world drinks lead paint" scenario to make Seelowe successful... You get sick of that type of scenarios after encountering: half a dozen aerial invasions; two dozen instances of the RAF and RN being arbitrarily handwaved out of existence; four or five cases of the Germans planning for Seelowe non-stop from 1918 and several cases of German carriers popping up out of nowhere .