[WarInEur] Sea Lion and Fall of France

[Wardall Clark]

> 1. Sealion, North Africa, all revolve around France taking so> long to fall! (Chuck Sutherland)
> The standard Sealion rules are going to work and will scare the English if France actually falls near an historical time frame. Instead of 6 months say 2. This gives the Germans 4 extra months to attempt Sealion. This in turn will keep the English home with most of their troops instead of loading up NA to crush the Axis early on.> > Fix France, you will fix NA and Sealion!> Not So, Because the soonest the Axis can have an AMPH under current rules is 1/8/40.  The Axis literally cannot cross the Channel any sooner than that.  They cannot make a two-division Landing until 1/9/40.  Or a three-division landing until 1/10/40.  IMHO, there is no realistic threat prior to 1/8/40, because the Axis doesn't have the capacity to seize an occupied port via amphibious assault. 
 
Here we run into a quandary in the naval movement rules.  An NTP can transport 1 division over 60 hexes, but not 2 divisions over 4 hexes.  This is sort of a necessity in the game, since if the ships get sunk transporting the first division they are not availble to transport the second.   In real life, the shipping to move 12 divisions from Calais to Dover&London would be a small fraction of the shipping for something like the Saipan invasion, in which some of the troops came non-stop from Hawaii;  Same number of troops, whole different magnitude in terms of freight-carrying ability required. 
 
About the only way to realistically portray the kind of shipping the Germans planned to use for Sea Lion is to put definate range limits on 
the counters. It also would be fair to say that the RW barges and such would not have the capability of remaining in place to serve as an artificial port.  In short, the Axis planned to use something that would not qualify as a WIE  AMPH to move their first wave  of troops. 
 
 It would further be also accurate to say that they planned to move a very substantial 2nd wave using much less merchant shipping than would ordinarily constitute the NTPs necessary to move that many divisions.  Therefore, it would seem that the NTPs involved should be short ranged but numerous, and quite possibly be usable not only for a limited period but also a limited number of cross channel trips. 
 
What this means is that WIE is not fully capable of simulating the threat to England of the fall of 1940. It does an excellent job of simulating what would have happened to the ships capable of moving 12+ Divisions from France and Belgium to England if the Axis had tried to move them without first establishing sufficient Air Superiority to drive off the Royal Navy's destroyers, light cruisers, frigettes, and such. 
 
The current Sea Lion table showing the interaction of Air Sea Missions with the High Seas Interdiction routine seems a reasonable simulation.  If the Axis can afford to dedicate scads of APs to Sea Superiority then the risk to the invading forces is substantially reduced but not eliminated.  A series of bad die rolls may still decimate the invaders before they reach the landing hexes.  And even worse, 
there is a risk that the Axis APs assigned to Sea Superiority will serve no useful purpose, because Air Superiority was not won that week. 
 
It should also noted that even if the Axis achieves Air superiority, there might be surviving Allied AP on Sea Superiority, Thus further upping the threat to the Axis forces at sea.  One can thus envision the Axis having a larger number of AP but the Allies assigning just as many or more AP to Air Superiority and thus the air battles producing greater losses for the Axis than the Allies. 
 
Yet these Air battles make no sense, unless the Axis player has access to enough shipping for a viable invasion.  Until the shipping is there, no Axis AP should be assigned to Sea Superiority and so if the Allies don't have equal numbers of AP, they don't need to bother to fly.   
 
While the effect of the threat of Sea Lion on the land war could be simulated simply by prohibiting movement of British Divisions and Brigades to Asia or Africa until the weather changes, the Battle of Britain requires a WIE rationale.  If neither side has any Air-ground or Sea Superiority missions to protect, who cares who has Air Superiority that week?
 
--Bob-- 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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