War Games

[shinytoaster]

The excellent and eminently watchable Francis Pryor was back on our screens tonight. I think I blogged about him once back when I lived with Moronic Matthew. He did an excellent three parter on prehistoric British cultures, exploring all sorts of interesting old theories and so on. Most of that show, which I think was called Britain BC, consisted of Francis walking across windswept moorlands whilst vaguely Celtic music filled the air - once you've filmed a bit around Stonehenge and dropped in some aerial shots of Avebury and Tintagel, there's precious little to show of Britain BC these days, and the whole period is probably best summed up with a few location shots of some nice countryside. At least you get a good walk and there's the prospect of a few beers in the pub afterwards. I'm digressing.



Well, this evening he was back, wargaming Operation Sealion as part of The Real Dad's Army, which has so far been an absolute treat to watch. It was quite fascinating finding out about this vast network of defensive lines that ring the entire country, which you can still see if you've a mind to look.

Now, I have a huge thing for the history of the war, and nothing piques my interest more than what (for non-Brits) we call the Home Front, the war is it was 'fought' - inasmuch as there was any hand-to-hand fighting, which there wasn't - on British soil. It's especially fascinating that there's this whole swathe of our history that is almost completely forgotten but which could almost have played an instrumental part in that fight and could be remembered and celebrated today in the same way that we think of the major flashpoints and battles we all get taught in history. Thank all, whatever, powers they may be that there was no invasion and that Operation Sealion never put to sea, but had it come to pass, this whole defensive network would have sprung into action. It wasn't needed, but its infrastructure was there. This country had the power to literally mount an insurgency. There were guerilla units, communist partisans, a fully-formed resistance, maybe suicide units. The 'what if' aspect is horrifying in its consequences, but fascinating when you consider how it could easily have played out.

Pryor and his valiant band of war-gaming enthusiasts mounted an assault on the south east coast, with a force of 90,000 landing in a broad swathe from Brighton to Folkestone. Coming ashore at Cuckmere Haven, which is where the South Downs dip into the sea just east of Seaford at what is now the Seven Sisters Country Park, the invading force would have overwhelmed the British beach defences three hours into the campaign. However, the lines and lines of defensive obstructions, if employed correctly, would have slowed the advance inland enough to allow sufficiently trained forces time to group fifteen miles inland. By the second day the Royal Navy has arrived from Scapa Flow and is wreaking havoc with the invasion fleet in the channel. By the third day, using the actual plans drawn up for the 1940 invasion, they calculated it was perfectly conceivable that the Nazi High Command would have mounted a full scale withdrawal and retreated back across the Channel. Unable to support themselves with tanks or back up their troops with supplies, the total Nazi advance would have been just fifteen miles.

Who's to say what effect this would have had on the overall progress of the war. But as someone who had always assumed that the principles of Blitzkrieg would have applied here as they did in Continental Europe, and probably to thousands of others who suspected the tanks would have been in Whitehall before you could say Churchill, it was quite a surprise to see the odds stacked in Britain's favour so early in the game.

We're bloody lucky it never came to that.

Comments

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

The Germans could never have done Blitzkrieg in the early phase of Seelöwe - Blitzkrieg requires enormous amounts of supplies, particularly of fuel, as well as air superiority, which the Germans would not have over land. A number of RAF-bases would remain out of reach of German airpower, so the RAF would have functioning airbases for Fighter Command. Transporting the supplies for the German forces would also have been a nightmare, as the German shipping-resources were limited. When Germany invaded Norway some months earlier, they had to use most of their warships as ferries, and they only landed 8,500 troops for the initial wave. The german effort across the channel was based mostly on barges, coastal ships and canal ships.

[ias.livejournal.com]

It was a bloody good programme, wasn't it? (I got very excited at seeing the dots and lines in N. Ireland as many of then were around where I come from) Anyway, we both sat engrossed for the hour. Thank god it didn't start when Life on Mars was still on the Beeb, otherwise we wouldn't have seen it at all.

[agarttha.livejournal.com]

The programme was very good, I agree. But I wondered what happened to the Luftwaffe during the retreat-- was it completely engaged in countering the RAF?