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Operation Sealion
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tary Conflict
|conflict=Operation Sea Lion
|image=|caption=
|partof=the Western Front of World War II
|place= Normandy, the Belgian coast line, the English Channel and the English coast line from Kent to Dorset, Isle of Wight and parts of Devon, but principally in Sussex and Kent.
|date=Planned for September 1940, but cancelled
|result=Cancelled on 17 September 1940, by Adolf Hitler due to a predicted Strategic Axis failure.
|combatant1= Germany
Italy
|combatant2= United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
Free French
Free Polish
Czechoslovakia
|commander1= Adolf Hitler
Erich Raeder (naval forces)
Hermann Göring (air)
Gerd von Rundstedt (land forces)
|commander2=
Winston Churchill
Dudley Pound (1st Sea Lord)
Lord Newall (MRAF)
Edmund Ironside (CIGS)
|strength1=~125,000+
700 tanks
2,000 aircraft
|strength2=~250,000 initially + exiled various forces
? tanks
600+ aircraft
|casualties1=
|casualties2= }}
Operation Sea Lion was Germany's plan to invade the United Kingdom during World War II, beginning in 1940.
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Encyclopedia
tary Conflict
|conflict=Operation Sea Lion
|image=|caption=
|partof=the Western Front of World War II
|place= Normandy, the Belgian coast line, the English Channel and the English coast line from Kent to Dorset, Isle of Wight and parts of Devon, but principally in Sussex and Kent.
|date=Planned for September 1940, but cancelled
|result=Cancelled on 17 September 1940, by Adolf Hitler due to a predicted Strategic Axis failure.
|combatant1= Germany
Italy
|combatant2= United Kingdom
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
Free French
Free Polish
Czechoslovakia
|commander1= Adolf Hitler
Erich Raeder (naval forces)
Hermann Göring (air)
Gerd von Rundstedt (land forces)
|commander2=
Winston Churchill
Dudley Pound (1st Sea Lord)
Lord Newall (MRAF)
Edmund Ironside (CIGS)
|strength1=~125,000+
700 tanks
2,000 aircraft
|strength2=~250,000 initially + exiled various forces
? tanks
600+ aircraft
|casualties1=
|casualties2= }}
Operation Sea Lion was Germany's plan to invade the United Kingdom during World War II, beginning in 1940. The operation was postponed indefinitely on 17 September 1940.
Background
Following swift victory in the Battle of France, Germany believed the war in the west was won. However, the United Kingdom refused peace talks. As a result, more direct measures to break British resistance were considered.
Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) Erich Raeder of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) oversaw numerous studies for a German naval assault across the English Channel. The earliest of these, made around November 1939, identified the conditions for invasion:
- The British Royal Navy must be eliminated.
- The British Royal Air Force air strength must be eliminated.
- British Coastal defences must be destroyed.
- British submarine action against landing forces must be prevented.
The German Army High Command (or OKH) originally planned an invasion on a vast scale, extending along most of the English Channel, from Dorset to Kent. This was far in excess of what their navy could supply and final plans were more modest, calling for nine divisions to make an amphibious landing with around 67,000 men in the first echelon and an airborne division to support them. The chosen invasion sites ran from Rottingdean in the west to Hythe in the east.
The battle plan called for German forces to be launched from Cherbourg to Lyme Regis, Le Havre to Ventnor and Brighton, Boulogne to Eastbourne, Calais to Folkestone, and Dunkirk and Ostend to Ramsgate. German paratroopers would land near Brighton and Dover. Once the coastline was secured, they would push north, taking Gloucester and encircling London. There is reason to believe that the Germans would not attempt to assault the city but besiege it, and bombard it. German forces would secure England up to the 52nd parallel (approximately as far north as Northampton), anticipating that the rest of the United Kingdom would then surrender.
Adolf Hitler's initial warning order on 16 July 1940, reflected the most current thinking and set out the revised minimum pre-conditions. He prefaced his order by stating:
"I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, to carry it out".
Hitler's conditions for invasion were:
- The RAF was to be "beaten down in its morale and in fact, that it can no longer display any appreciable aggressive force in opposition to the German crossing".
- The English Channel was to be swept of British mines at the crossing points, and the Straits of Dover must be blocked at both ends by German mines.
- The coastal zone between occupied France and England must be dominated by heavy artillery.
- The Royal Navy must be sufficiently engaged in the North Sea and the Mediterranean so that it could not intervene in the crossing. British home squadrons must be damaged or destroyed by air and torpedo attacks.
This placed responsibility for Sealions success on the shoulders of Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine, or OKM) Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) Erich Raeder and Air Force High Command (Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, or OKL) Imperial Marshal (Reichsmarschall) Hermann Göring.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini offered to send Italian troops to participate in the projected invasion, but Hitler declined his offer. However, the Italian Air Corps (Corpo Aereo Italiano, or CAI) did participate towards the end of the Battle of Britain.
Operation Eagle and air superiority
The aerial battles which resulted from (Operation Eagle) later became known as the Battle of Britain. Adler's objective was for the to achieve air superiority over the Royal Air Force and allow the German invasion fleet to cross the English Channel. However, the change in emphasis of the bombing from RAF Bases to bombing London turned Adler into a strategic bombing operation. This switch afforded the RAF, reeling from attacks on its bases, time to pull back and regroup.
Navy
The main difficulty for Germany was the small size of its navy. The had lost a sizable portion of its large modern surface units in the Norwegian Campaign, either as complete losses or battle damage. In particular, the loss of a large portion of their destroyers was crippling. The U-boats, the most powerful arm of the , were not suitable for operations in the relatively shallow and restricted English Channel. Although the Royal Navy could not bring the whole of its naval superiority against the (most of the fleet was engaged in the Atlantic and Mediterranean), the British Home Fleet still had a very large advantage in numbers. British ships were still vulnerable to enemy air superiority, as demonstrated during the Dunkirk evacuation and by the later sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse. However, the 22-mile width of the English Channel, and the overall difference in power between the British and German naval forces, made the amphibious invasion plan risky, regardless of victory or defeat in the air during the Battle of Britain. In addition, the Kriegsmarine had allocated its few remaining larger and modern ships to diversionary operations in the North Sea.
The French fleet, one of the most powerful and modern in the world, might have tipped the balance against Britain if operated by the . However the destruction of the French fleet by the British during the attack on Mers-el-Kébir and the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon two years later, ensured that this didn't happen.
Even if the Royal Navy had been neutralised, the chances of making a successful amphibious invasion across the channel were remote. The transport ships to be used by the Germans for landing were primarily river barges since the Germans had no specialised landing craft. This would have limited the quantity of artillery and tanks that could have been transported, and restricted operations to times of good weather. The barges were not designed for the open sea and even with almost perfect conditions, their progress would have been slow and the craft vulnerable to attack. There weren't enough barges to transport the first invasion wave nor the following waves with their equipment. Without specialised landing craft, the Germans would have needed to immediately capture one of the ports, an unlikely situation considering the strength of the British coastal defences around the south-eastern harbours at that time. The British also had several contingency plans, including the planned use of poison gas.
Cancellation
On 17 September 1940, Hitler held a meeting with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Hitler became convinced that the operation was doomed. Control of the skies was unavailable, and coordination among three branches of the armed forces was out of question. Later that day, Hitler ordered the postponement of the operation.
It was only a postponement at that stage. Prototypes of two designs of a prefabricated jetty, similar in function to Mulberry Harbours, were built and successfully overwintered in the North Sea in 1941/42. After cancellation, they were installed on the Island of Alderney, where they remained until being demolished in 1978.
Not until 13 February 1942, after the invasion of Russia, were forces earmarked for the operation released to other duties.
The postponement coincided with a rumour that there had been an attempt to land on British shores at Shingle Street, but it had been repulsed with large German casualties. This was reported in the American press but was officially denied. British papers, declassified in 1993, have suggested this was a successfully-engineered example of British black propaganda to improve morale in Britain, America and occupied Europe.
Chances of success
Military historians are divided on whether Operation Sealion might have succeeded; some such as Michael Burleigh, Andrew Mollo, and Kenneth Macksey believe success was possible, while others such as Peter Fleming, Derek Robinson and Stephen Bungay believe the operation would have most likely resulted in a disaster for the Germans if attempted. Adolf Galland, commander of fighters at the time, claimed invasion plans were not serious and that there was a palpable sense of relief in the when it was finally called off.
There were a number of errors in German intelligence, and whilst some of these might not have caused problems there were others (such as the inclusion of bridges that no longer existed or mis-understanding the usefulness of minor British roads) that would have been detrimental to German operations, and would have only added to the confusion caused by the layout of Britain's cities and the removal of road signs.
After the London Blitz, Hitler turned his attention to the invasion of the Soviet Union, and lapsed, never to be resumed.
Post-war test of the plan
In wargames conducted at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1974, which assumed the had not yet won air supremacy, the Germans were able to establish a beachhead in England by using a minefield screen in the English Channel to protect the initial assault. However, the German ground forces were delayed at the "Stop Lines" (e.g., the GHQ Line), a layered series of defensive positions that had been built, each a combination of Home Guard troops and physical barriers. At the same time, the regular troops of the British Army were forming up. After only a few days, the Royal Navy was able to reach the Channel from Scapa Flow, cutting off supplies and blocking further reinforcement. Isolated and facing regular troops with armour and artillery, the invasion force was made to surrender.
German occupation of Britain
Had Operation Sea Lion been launched, six were to follow the invasion force to Great Britain. They were provided with a list (known as The Black Book) of 2,820 people to be arrested immediately.
In fiction
There is a large corpus of works set in an alternative history where the German invasion of Britain has been successfully carried out. These include:
Against the Day, Through the Night and In the Morning by Michael CroninCollaborator by Murray DaviesSS-GB by Len DeightonInvasion: Alternative History of the German Invasion of England, July 1940, by Kenneth MackseyFatherland by Robert HarrisWeaver:Time's Tapestry, by Stephen BaxterPlaysPeace In Our Time (1946 - first performance 1947) by Noel CowardFilm and televisionBedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)It Happened HereWhen Hitler Invaded Britain (2004)Hitler's Britain (2002)Video games- Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
- Empire Earth: in the German Campaign, the last mission is to carry out Operation Sealion
- Axis & Allies: while playing as the Axis powers in campaign mode (which has the Axis powers winning the war), Operation Sealion is the mission following the failed invasion of Normandy.
- War Front: Turning Point
- Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain (you can play an Axis pilot trying to defeat the RAF)
Alberto Cavalcanti's 1942 film Went the Day Well? is centred on a German reconnaissance mission for Sea Lion being eventually repulsed by the efforts of the civilian population of a remote village. A less contemporary dealing with the fear of German invasion concerned the German paratroopers central to the plot of the 1971 film Dad's Army who have crashed with photographs vital to the invasion.
See also
Herkules - The planned German invasion of Malta Operation Tannenbaum - The planned German invasion of Switzerland Operation Felix - The planned German invasion of Gibraltar Fall Grün - The planned German invasion of Ireland.
Further reading
Invasion - The Alternate History of the German Invasion of England, July 1940 (1980) Greenhill Books ISBN 1-85367-361-7Parkinson, Roger (1977). Summer, 1940: The Battle of Britain. David McKay Co.. ISBN 0679507566
External links
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- Second on the unlikelihood of Sealion
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