The bit I find improbable in the Sandhurst refight is the bit where the Germans surrender after four days when the second wave doesn't get ashore. When did that ever happen?
From the summary of the Sandhurst exercise results:
[Starting on day 4 of the venture -Mk1} … at daylight 5th destroyer flotilla found the barges still 10 miles off the coast and tore them to shreds. The Luftwaffe in turn committed all its remaining bombers, and the RAF responded with 19 squadrons of fighters …. but 65% of the barges were sunk. The faster steamers broke away and headed for Folkestone, but the port had been so badly damaged that they could only unload two at a time.The failure on the crossing meant that the German situation became desperate. The divisions had sufficient ammunition for 2 to 7 days more fighting, but without extra men and equipment could not extend the bridgehead … the Germans began preparations for an evacuation as further British
attacks hemmed them in tighter. Fast steamers and car ferries were assembled for evacuation via Rye and Flkestone. Of 90,000 troops who landed on 22nd september, only 15,400 returned to France, the rest were killed or captured.
I don't see anything in the Sandhurst results that suggest that the Germans all surrender en mass on the 4th day.
What I read in the Sandhurst results was, after the 4th day the Germans gave up on the venture, stopped sending more troops, and started evacuation efforts. And the majority of troops in the UK, who could not be evacuated, were destroyed or captured once they ran out of supplies. No suggestion that it happened in one day, only that it happened, and the fourth day was the turning point.
The issue (in the Sandhurst exercise) was not just the failure of the next wave to get ashore. It was the loss of shipping that carried the next wave.
The German plan was a study in amateur-hour logistics. There was only one set of shipping, to carry both the troops and the supplies. If you are carrying troops, you are not carrying re-supply for troops. Even if you succeed in landing the second wave you have only doubled your re-supply burden, but you still don't have any more shipping. And if your boat goes down (in either case), you do not carry any more re-supply.
Divisions don't carry unlimited supplies with them. Certainly not if they are advancing, and certainly if they have no base of supplies in their area of operations. This is even more true of armored divisions -- panzers needed to refuel two or three times PER DAY when operationally active. Use up what they carry and, if it isn't re-supplied, the division's combat capability dwindles quickly and within a few days approaches zero.
The German plan depended on continuous capture of stocks of supplies as they advanced. There are a few flaws in this approach. First, the British did not indicate they were inclined to leave lots of supplies behind -- they had home forces tasked to ensure supplies were removed or destroyed. Second, if the Brits fail in that task, you need to have manpower assigned to gathering and distributing the resources you overrun -- soldiers who are hunting for food every day are not pursuing their military objectives. Third, the moment you stop advancing, your source of supplies dries up. Fourth, even if they can source food, even if they can find petrol, they won't find ammunition for their guns. The Brits didn't have stockpiles of German ammunition to leave behind. Even well-fed men armed only with bayonets are just not that hard to defeat in combat.
The German judges in the Sandhurst exercise seemed to raise objection to a couple factors. So it does not appear that they were patsies. But the decisive defeat of the forces ashore, once they lost both the ability to re-supply and the follow-on forces to continue the advance, was not one of them.
If we look at Sicily the Germans evacuated large numbers of men, their equipment and their vehicles despite allied air and sea superiority.
The Sandhurst exercise results included evacuation of some several thousand troops. But to suggest that all the troops who had been landed could be evacuated, when there was not enough shipping to carry them all in the first place, and when the reason for the evacuation was that too much shipping had been lost, seems highly unlikely to me.
It is actually more likely that Britain would have surrendered at that point – there'd have been plenty of people quite happy to put the Germans in charge, just like in the Cold War there were plenty of Britons happy to put the USSR in charge.
This statement seems at odds with everything I've read about and observed about the British.
I don't deny that there were people who would have supported some form of reconciliation or accommodation with the Germans in France. But once the fight was on, once the fight was over their home turf, I don't see anything in the history of British behavior to suggest they would have surrendered.
I suppose it is possible that a fifth column activity might have compromised the political or military command structure. But 90,000 troops without ammunition against a population of 45+ million folks who have centuries upon centuries of history (and so of cultural iconography) of resisting every invader … I'm just not seeing surrender as very likely.
Could be wrong. Been known to happen. But I'm not seeing it.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
explores another variant in the European Buildings range.
