Hi, as part of my small ongoing Operation Sealion project I've searched some information about both factions involved in the operation. First of all I searched on the internet some information about the navy of both factions which could be used during operation Sealion in the Channel. I quickly came to the conclusion that the Germany lacked an adequate surface fleet which was heavily outnumbered by the superior British home fleet.
French war fleet at Mers-el-Kebir
So I searched more information about the French warfleet which was quite modern. This fleet together with the Kriegsmarine would pose a serieus threat to the Royal Navy. This of course is "what if", would the German Army be able to capture the French war fleets at Dakar, Toulon and Mers-el-Kebir or would be able to convince the Vichy French to join the operation. The French navy mentionned in the table below is made up by the sum of the war fleets of Dakar, Mers-el-Kebir and Toulon.
Together with the mass assembled heavy artillery on the French coast and the Luftwaffe's superiority above the channel, the Germans would probably be able to land sufficient troops and supplies for a campaign. Another thing I've recently saw in a book and on the internet are the following numbers about the British Army in 1940. These numbers were the averages of several sources and do not contain other vehicles than Light and Medium tanks.
As seen I've also added the Home Guard an important part of the British defense system however poorly equiped they were numerious and were experts in ambush as they only fought in the areas near their town and villages. An interesting fact of the Home Guard was they weren't allowed to attack airborne units of less than 6 men as all British airplanes had a crew of 6 or less! And you don't want to shoot your own pilots which were highly appreciated.
I hope you enjoyed this small update, if you have more information or comments please shoot!
Ps, this "research" is purely "what if" and isn't intended to be fully historical correct.
Greets,
2 comments:
Very cool - on the first point, I seem to recall the plan called for the use of captured RN ships to transport troops across the channel, but I'm not sure how that capture was supposed to take place!
As an aside, I saw an episode of Antique's Roadshow a few years back where a member of the public had a copy of the very last revision of the operation, printed in early '45. Amazingly, the team responsible for the planning continued to exist all through the war, slowly shrinking as personnel were moved on to other tasks, but maintaining the plan long after it became completely infeasible.
Good information, I didn't know about the RN ships they intended to capture sounds like a nice scenario, a bit like the saint nazaire raid!
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