What-If...A Pool of my Alternate History

[Rob]

Rob, did those ships have guns onboard? Even if they were for self-defense? Or armed Escorts?

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Very frequently not.

Rob

[Sr. Gopher]

Rob, did those ships have guns onboard? Even if they were for self-defense? Or armed Escorts?

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Very frequently not.

Rob

Then, in that case, the evac is out. The civilians are just sent to the countryside, with white flags and a red cross on the top of the houses. If that doesn't work, I guess that the Germans will have to pay even heavier war fines. Sorry about the issue Rob.

[Simon_Hwood]

I don't think red crosses & white flags would work.

The Luftwaffe bombed chunks of London, Coventry, Plymouth etc flat, and they were no more concerned about the civilian population that when the RAF bombed great chunks for Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Nurenburg etc flat.

As an aside, how many french civilian's were killed by the Bombardments on the Normandy beach head area, I have never seen figures, or much mention of it, even when I have been exploring that part of the world, but as a number of small towns & villages were right on the invasion beaches it must have been quite a few.

WW2 was total war, Both the the RAF and USAAF 8th Air Force bombed targets in occupied France, It is inevitable such raids will have caused casualties amongst the civilian population.

Whislt I admire your concern for the Civilain population, In real terms to the Military Command / Government fighting for survival the Civilian population tends to regarded as at best a nuiscience that gets in the way & consumes resources.

Had the Invasion taken place, and Britain was fighting for survival, whilst there may have been some organised movement away from the front line areas, beyond that the civilian population would be left to fend for itself, virtually all transport, rail & road would have been need to move troops and supplies about, and would not been available civilian use. It is highly likely you would have seen roads clogged with refugees, mostly on foot, as happened on mainland Europe trying tp outrun the fighting, and probably being straffed as they were on mainland Europe.

Si

[Sr. Gopher]

You would have thought that the Geneva Convention had layed down strict rule regarding the attack of civilians. BUt even in the countryside the Germans couldn't avoid hitting civilians?

[Simon_Hwood]

The problem is in the reality of war, things like the Geneva convention go out of the window. If I remember correctly it is hot & strong against thing like the indescriminate area bombing of cities, but both allied & axis air forces did it. During the Invasion of France there are recorded cases of Luftwaffe fighters & ground attack aircraft deliberately straffing & bombing civilian refugees.

The deliberate & cynical attack of enemy civilians in an invasion situation, as in France in 1940 is done to cause panic amongst the civilian population, they then try and escape the front line areas, this clogs the roads in the area behind the frontline, which slows down the bringing up of supplies & reserves, thus hampering the ability of the defending forces to put up an effective fight. It was one thing in 1944 that hampered the allies, as they were trying to liberate the civilian population, and therefore had to try and minimise civilian casualities. Look at the bombing Caen during operation charnwood in late june 1944, the allies knew the occupying forces had not allowed the civillian population to leave, yet major portions of the city were flattened.

The V1 & V2 weapons were not accurate enough to be useda target smaller than a city, and were therefore designed and used for the sole purpose of destroying civilian infrastructre and killing civilains.

There has been much discussio n as to why V1s were not launched against the Normandy beachhead & the mulberry harbours, the truth is they were not accurate enough, and there was a fair chance a sizable percentage of those launched would have landed on the german side of the lines.

Both sides during WW2 carried out deliberate attacks against civilian populations in order to try and break the enemy's morale. there is no evidence that in any case that it was "succesful", except maybe the Hiroshima & Nagasaki bombs.

Those facing charges at war crimes trials always come from the defeated side. from the viewpont of the victors, the ends justify the means.

Si

[Sr. Gopher]

Well then, I guess if the civilians are being attacked either way, a militia is in order for the boys and men. Only if the Germans do make it to their town, the British will take up arms. Or hide in a bomb shelter, depending on the attack.

[Simon_Hwood]

Local militias, you have hit the nail on the head.

In Britain, we did have a "militia" at first called the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers), then the Home Guard. Consisting mostly of those either too Old or too young for call up into the regualar forces, and those in "reserved occupations" (Jobs needed for the war effort, and therefore not elligable for regular military service). The LDV was formed in May 1940 after the invasion of France & it begin with had little or nothing in the way of uniforms or equipment. The first uniform issued was an armband. Ironically, at the time they were most likely to be needed, they were low down the priority list for equipment & uniforms because of re-equiping the troops brought back form Dunkirk. There were also a highly secret band, known as "Auxiliary Units" who were to operate, in case of an invasion, behind German lines commiting acts of sabotage, and forming the basis of a Resitance movement.

I would think had operation Dynamo failed and we had lost most of the Army, the formation and equiping of Home Guard units would have received a much higher priority, as the home based divisions of the regular army were already fully equiped.

Here is a thought, in any invasion of the UK would the German forces have gone straight for a port, like Dover or Ramsgate, or beach landing. just thinking, as what defences we had were clustered around the ports, and apart from The Romney Marshes, (And knowing that area quite well, it is not ideal offensive country, espeically for the early war German tanks with narrow tracks) a lot of the south east corner of England is Cliffs, and the Invasion Barges were mostly around the Pas de Calais and the Dutch & Belgian Ports.

The Allies, until they tried it out at Dieppe thought it might be possible to centre the invasion around a major port.

If you are talking about German troops getting ashore in numbers, and paratroops, read up on the Home Guard, and the "Auxiliary Units" (They in particular make an interesting tale, and could be written into any Invasion scenario)

Also of course you had the Volksturm in operating in Germany after the Rhine crossing, research into that could give an idea of effectiveness of such units.

Si

[Sr. Gopher]

Those Auixilary units, they kind of remind me of that old show: "Hogan's Heroes"! That was pretty funny, though unrealistic. Maybe some of the captured at Dunkirk escape the prison camps, and are sabotaging the German invasion fleet. Also, about the invasion location: I am thinking that the Germans would head for a beach, seeing that they were developing some conventional landing craft: http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ ... index.html The ports would probably actually be defended, unlike those false guns along the coasts.

[navydavesof]

By the time of Pearl Harbor, the USN will have 6 Essex, 6 Midways, 5 Forrestals, 2 Nimitz (2 more on the way), and 1 Ford (3 more on the way).

Mr. Gopher, please pardon me if you have answered this already, because I have not read all of your inputs yet, but there are some very large issues with your plan.

How do you justify the technological progression that actually took place over 60 years to be accomplished in only maybe 20-30 years worth of the early half of the 20th century?

Would the Nimitzs be nuclear powered or conventionally? No amount of technological acceleration would have given you nuclear power plants like what even Enterprise has much less what Ford has.

Even if you have these enormous carriers, what are you flying off of them? The only reason current carriers are as big as they are is because they need to be to take enough of our super high performance jets into a theater to make the jets and ships cost effective. Otherwise they would have gotten no larger than the Midways.

Something you may want to explore, if you want to use a lot of modern equipment like it sounds like you do, is perhaps write a modern world war with the same players as WWII. That way you don't have to re-write not just history just technological progression as well.

Just a thought.

[Sr. Gopher]

All of the ships are conventionally powered, as in my alt history, the Manhattan Project was dropped after a large fleet was created, and the designers burnde all of the plans. The US didn't want their massive fleet to all of a sudden become obsolete, and perhaps, be sent to the bottom of the ocean should the enemy get the plans of the bomb. The large Nimitz and Ford classes have 6-7 propellers each. They will be launching large aircraft on a normal basis, including the B-25 and A-26. They would even launch C-47s towing gliders with the assistance of rocket boosters. Also, they would launch up to 170 F8F Bearcats, had the others been removed. A normal 1947 complement of aircraft would be 40 A-26 Invaders, 40 F7F Tigercats, 20 P-51 Mustangs, 20 A-26 Apaches, and 30 F8F Bearcats. The Bearcats would be used as fleet defense fighters (kamikazes), the Mustangs would escort the A-26s, the Tigercats would be used as an attack fighter, and the Apaches as small single seat dive bombers.

[navydavesof]

All of the ships are conventionally powered, as in my alt history, the Manhattan Project was dropped after a large fleet was created...

that's....interesting.

The large Nimitz and Ford classes have 6-7 propellers each.

Did you do it because you are assuming the nuclear ships needed something special that only a nuclear reactor produces? All they need is a propulsion plant to produce the steam needed to make speed. Why not just put the same boilers the Montanas were going to have in all of your super-carriers? The Montanas were going to have 320,000shp pushing through 4 propellers to make 33knots, and that's exactly what the Nimitzs require for their speed.

[Sr. Gopher]

All of the ships are conventionally powered, as in my alt history, the Manhattan Project was dropped after a large fleet was created...

that's....interesting.

Well, the JCS decides to end it, because if the secrets of the project were to get out, they could lose an entire fleet with just one bomb, the Army could lose an entire invasion force, and the with these in full production, they could potentially lose the entire country to 2 carriers' airwing.

The large Nimitz and Ford classes have 6-7 propellers each.

Did you do it because you are assuming the nuclear ships needed something special that only a nuclear reactor produces? All they need is a propulsion plant to produce the steam needed to make speed. Why not just put the same boilers the Montanas were going to have in all of your super-carriers? The Montanas were going to have 320,000shp pushing through 4 propellers to make 33knots, and that's exactly what the Nimitzs require for their speed.

Then that will be the case!

[Simon_Hwood]

On the Auxiluary Units, from what I understand, they were far from a joke, and although put together in a hurry the men selected received quite intensive training. They operated in small cells, or in some cases as individuals, each man had a hidden underground bunker in local woodland, with explosives, weapons and two weeks supply of food & water. On the front line approaching their area, they would go to ground, and as soon as the front line passed over them start operating.

Part of their training included trying to get into local stately homes (mansions etc) as it was expected these would be commandeered by Generals, the occupying adminsitration etc, to carry out assasinations.

The two weeks supply of rations was because that was their life expectancy behind German lines.

It does sound like the makings of a bad TV series, but it was a serious response in what were desperate times.

I think the idea of POW's taken at Dunkirk escaping & commiting sabotage is a good one. the practical problem of over 250,000 prisoners to deal with taken in such a short time would have been a nightmare for the German Army and I could see quite a few doing a runner.

Also I can see the usual rule in the British Armed Forces that Commissioned Officers were under an obligation to try & escape, but other ranks were not being dropped and a General order being put out to cause as much mayhem as possible to hinder the invasion.

From the point of view of Landing sites, The East Anglian coast, North of the River Thames & London Suffolk in particular probably offers the best beaches & terrain for getting in land. South of the River, Kent & Sussex is mostly cliffs & marshes, with the Downs giving good defensive terrian. The best section of the Kent Coast, from Deal, North round Pegwell bay has the Goodwin sands right offshore from it, a large sandbank dry at low tide, making any landing on a falling or low tide treacherous.

A few more thoughts

Si

[Sr. Gopher]

Well after a few months working on this, I still have lost my mind about what to do in the European theater. These events were all wiped off thanks to the evacuation of the British in 1940:
-All battles by the British in the Pacific
-Hunt for the Bismarck
-Med./North Africa campaigns

A good number of ships would be spared the destruction they would face if they remained at their original station.

Just for the record, Hogan's Heroes was, and still is, an enjoyable sitcom for me to watch. Although silly, it did reveal the whole espionage network the Allies had in Europe to some extent.

I would estimate between 8,000-10,500 escaping, with at least 1,000 casualties from those who tried to escape. A great deal could also be done had they been transported in large numbers. Images of barbaric battles against the Germans appear in my mind, walking through the French countryside, with only about 20 men to guard 150-200, with only a vehicle or 2 as escort. Of course they would have a machine gun or two, with pistols or rifles, but well-placed hits with large enough numbers, the Allied soldiers could overcome their German captors. Hiding around in small groups with the German weapons, fighting back to the coast or Switzerland. Seems like a reasonable story. I doubt the Germans would put no more than 20,000 men on escort duty, with no more than 50 tanks. Other vehicles would be vulnerable to any other attack. Also, I could easily imagine the British providing limited air cover for them, with a few ships moving in and out to rescue those who do make it to the beaches. Also, the Germans would probably not care so much for POWs who would be a nuisance to take care of, when they still had thousands more to tend to. Hitler would probably not even bother to look at the reports, thinking that they were soldiers doing their job.