
Why Sealion Is Not an Option for Hitler to Win the War (1998) - apsec112
http://www.philmasters.org.uk/SF/Sealion.htm
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jcranmer
Amphibious assaults, particularly against prepared opponents, are perhaps the
single most difficult military operation you can contemplate. D-Day, arguably
the most well-known such assault, required years of meticulous planning, prior
experience with what to do and what not to do (Dieppe), a sophisticated
buildup of materiel on UK, complete air and naval superiority, successful
sabotaging by the French resistance to hamper German repulsive efforts, and
one of the most impressive counterintelligence campaigns in history (Germany
was transferring troops to Calais even after the assault started, because they
were duped into believing it was merely a feint). Even then, it only barely
succeeded.

Germany had absolutely none of those things. Most people arguing alternative
history scenarios tend to suggest some way by which the RAF and RN basically
cease to exist, and--as this article points out--even then, the plan was so
half-baked that it would still have failed. Basically, it would have failed
because the German high command had no idea how to do an amphibious invasion,
had no preparation for it, had no preparation for how to maintain an invading
force after the initial beach was cleared. In addition, the German blitzkrieg
tactics masked the fact that Germany had poor logistics capability, which
amphibious assaults are the poster child of: you need to carefully orchestrate
obscene concentrations of soldiers and materiel in confined space and time
(tide) restrictions.

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Animats
If you're not that familiar with D-day, you may not realize how extensive the
logistic preparations were. This was Eisenhower's achievement - his background
was in logistics. Moving an army across the English Channel was hard enough.
Forcing an opposed landing was hard. But once landed, supplying a huge
mechanized army for an attack across France presented problems never before
solved.

Preparations for the landing involved the development of landing craft of
various sizes, amphibious vehicles, (including the DD Sherman, which floated,
sort of, using canvas screens), and specialized vehicles such as flail tanks,
for beating a path through minefields. That's all well known.

Less well known are the second phase logistic innovations. There were the
Mulberry portable harbors, barges which were towed across the Channel and sunk
to provide breakwaters, along with jack-up rigs for wharfs and pontoon bridges
for access. These provided the first way to get trucks and tanks across in
quantity. The temporary harbors were destroyed in a storm, but by then enough
soldiers and gear were in France to capture a real harbor at Cherbourg.

Fuel was in drums in the early phases. But 17 fuel pipelines were unwound from
huge spools ("Conundrums") across the channel. That took care of fuel supply.
Mostly; there were still shortages in-theater.

There were lots of other new logistic systems, including, in the later stages
of the invasion, prepackaged Coca-Cola bottling plants. (64 transportable
bottling plants were eventually deployed.) The British fabricated low-cost
railroad locomotives to be transported to Europe for the invasion. The US Army
had railroad units which could quickly repair track and bridges. The famous
Red Ball Express, an endless chain of trucks traveling at 25MPH, did much
inland supply. The Allies had plenty of trucks. The Germans were still using
_horses_ for road transport in WWII. They planned to ship 4000 horses across
the channel for the invasion.

This may seem like overkill, but the Dieppe raid disaster convinced the Allies
that invasion without heavy logistics backup would be very risky and could
lead to huge armies being stranded and lost.

Sealion doesn't seem to have included comparable plans for supplying German
troops in Britain. Nor was the German invasion of Russia supplied adequately.
(German plans did not include supplying the troops with winter gear. It was
supposed to be a blitzkreig. Didn't work out that way.)

The WWII experience led to one of the great strengths of the American military
- the ability to supply a sizable army almost anywhere. Few armies worldwide
can do that at all. It's insanely expensive to do this, but it's a lot better
than losing.

For a modern view of military logistics, see "Moving Mountains", by Gen.
Patronis, who managed logistics for the Gulf War in the 1990s. Even though the
combat part of the war lasted only 4 days, they were prepared and supplied for
a long, hard war. Lots of supplies were unused and were shipped back to
storage. This is a lot better than underestimating the enemy.

~~~
jcranmer
In fairness, at the onset of WWII, only the US had fully abandoned using
horses in its logistical trains (save for terrain impassable by vehicle),
although only the USSR used horse logistics in anywhere near the degree the
Germans did. This can probably be partially attributed to persistent oil
shortages in Germany.

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rhino369
I wonder if the effectiveness of air superiority is being undervalued. The
record of surface navies vs air planes during WWII was not great.

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bduerst
For the Pacific theater, sure, but at the time the Luftwaffe were notoriously
bad at attacking ships, especially the hundreds of fast-moving smaller
gunboats which would have wrecked the invasion barges.

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walshemj
And the Luftwaffe didn't have the torpedo and bombers and the stuka was a
sitting duck by this time.

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Zardoz84
There was the Sigfrid bomb, but yeah, it come much more later.

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dang
Anybody know the year for this?

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defen
First post is from June of '98 (it was broken up into a series of Usenet
posts)

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/RQgq-
USI...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/RQgq-
USITZw/hvZUs3LRYS0J)

~~~
dang
Thanks! Added.

