Why does the Royal Navy retreat in Sea Lion 40?

[jdarocha]

I find that if I give the Royal Navy a good pounding in the first few turns of Sea Lion 40, and sink a few of their ships the remainder will retreat to Portsmouth and Southhampton, I've sent a ME109 there on recon when I started to noticed that the RN had been oddly absent from the channel. My ME109 always finds a few of the RN Capital ships there hiding. I would have thought the RN would have gone all out to prevent the landings and fought on regardless of loss. Just wondering.
Halder

[endur]

I've seen this behavior as well.

[Tarrak]

I think it's related to what the AI is spotting. If you move all the units it can see out of the range of the Royal Navy it withdraw waiting for some targets. The AI is not remembering really that you had some units and they still must be there even if it can't see them: Out of the sight , out of mind.

[McGuba]

Some scripting would solve this problem. But, as I see, there are no AI scripts in this scenario at all. Perhaps it was made before advanced scripting options were added to PzC.

Or maybe those RN skippers are afraid of the mighty Kriegsmarine so they just opt to hide instead to save their skin.

[Razz1]

The AI is set as defensive so it goes back to protect the ports. The Radar helps the AI see. However, it see's superior air power and sea power because you are winning.

[sn0wball]

While this has of course no relevance for that scenario, historically it is not far fetched to have them withdraw the capital ships from the Dover straight. While they could have done much damage to the invasion force, they would have suffered terribly from the Luftwaffe - exactly as it happens in the game.

What alternate history scenarios I have read seem to suggest that the Royal Navy would not have risked the whole of Home Fleet to destroy landing ships. Instead, they might have preferred to keep the fleet intact to fight another day. Strategically, London might have been less important than a fleet.

Unfortunately, the game does not allow them to leave the map, so withdrawing is futile here.

[jdarocha]

Thanks for all the answers.
Snowball, as a fan of alternate history your answer intrigues me. I would offer this to ponder, the most important facet of the Sea Lion operation was the landings, and second to that was re-supply, I would think, and I may be wrong, that the core to stopping Sea Lion is to stop the Germans on the beaches or ideally before they even get to the beaches. Given this premise, I would think, that once Sea Lion became apparent and German ships are crossing over, the RN would have thrown in all its available ships to stop the invasion force from landing. You are absolutely correct, that the Luftwaffe would have played havoc with the RN especially since Sea Lion was predicated on the successful defeat of the RAF in the Battle of Britain. So, had the RAF been defeated and the Luftwaffe ruled the skies as it did in Europe in 1939-1940, the RN would have taken serious losses due to JU88 attacks and so forth. But; there would have still been a desire to through the RN at the Kreigsmarine no matter what.

What do you think?

Thanks for your post it really made me think this over for a while.
Halder

[sn0wball]

Mentioning any kind of successful Sea Lion 1940 scenario in internet forums will usually get you trashed with overly critical commentaries, if not flaming. I have all my knowledge of WWII from computer games, roleplaying games and AH books. I tend to think that if a proposal is good enough for a serious author to get his book published, it is good enough for me.

A few AH history books I own include Sea Lion proposals. There is, for example, "Operation Sealion" by Kennth Macksey, published in The Hitler Options (a must-have if you are into AH essays) or "If Britain Had Fallen" by Norman Longmate.

Most capital ships might be stationed far outside a possible invasion area, to prevent them from being bombed in harbor (which would be possible by the German air victory). Luftwaffe inflicts high losses in escort destroyers due to air superiority over the Dover Straights. Smaller ships are distributed over a long, long coast. Without aerial reconnaissance the British will have no knowledge over the invasion site.

Given these cicumstances, one might come to the conclusion that the initial landing couldn´t be prevented anyway and that the RN should be best kept in reserve to prevent reinforcements, which might or might not work out. Also, using your capital ships prematurely might sacrifice them on what might be a ruse or diversionary attack.

Also, there is a strategical and political dimension. In 1940 there was far more to the British Empire than the Isle of Britain. Even if it was successfully invaded, one would need a fleet to protect Canada or to drive the Germans out again.

[jdarocha]

I've read Kenneth Mackey's "Operation Sea Lion" but not Norman Longmate's "If Britain had Fallen" I will hunt down that book and read it. Sounds like a good one.
Halder

[endur]

Let's also remember that we are talking about 1940. The absolute dominance of airpower over naval ships had not yet been established, and wouldn't be accepted as fact until Pearl Harbor and a few other battles had taken place.

From a scenario perspective, the British player in Sea Lion 40 has two battleships to the Germany player's one battleship (with the other naval forces being roughly comparable). Compare this to how many battleships the British Player in World in Flames might use to defend against a Sea Lion in 1940 in that game. Essentially the scenario is taking the assumption the rest of the British navy is busy elsewhere or being reserved for future conflicts.

From an air force perspective, the British Player in Sea Lion 40 has 4 or 5 fighters and 2 tactical bombers compared to the German player's 4 or 5 fighters, 2 aux strat bombers, and whatever other bombers the German player brings.

With all that being said, this is still a hard scenario to achieve a decisive victory against the AI. I believe it is an unwinnable scenario against a human opponent due to the fact that this scenario has one of the best defensive positions of any of the scenarios (playing allies against the AI, the AI can't even land troops in England).

[Stmcla]

On a historical note I think the RN would have mostly used smaller ships such at destroyers and light cruisers to attack any landings. The Channel was thought to be too narrow to deploy larger ships effectively. The plan was to move the navy to Canada if GB had fallen, so a full out suicide attack was not likely.

[BiteNibbleChomp]

I would have stayed and fought it out there if I was commander of the British fleet. Considering how much industrial power the British Isles had, losing them would have almost destroyed Britains power to fight.

- BNC

[sn0wball]

That would be the premise of an interesting but ugly scenario. The government orders the fleet to retreat - what will the fleet command do ? Will they obey against their believe, will they just disregard that order in an act of mutiny or would they go so far to remove said dishonarable or treacherous government - which would mean a coup d´etat!

At least one author writing about an untimately successful Sea Lion lets the invasion fail militarily, but let´s the British government violently collapse before anybody notices. I think this would be the best way to go for a plausible defeat of the UK by means of a Sea Lion invasion - let it be a costly military disaster for the Germans, but a political one for Britain, removing them from the war not through surrender and occupation, but by armistice and a Quisling government.

Perhaps we´ll live to see a DLC campaign for Sea Lion and beyond, GC style. The invasion of Britain deserves at least as many scenarios as the invasion of France.