Sealion '41
I will show how a successful invasion of England can be made - while having all other objectives for DV still continued.
Mode: V2.2, FM, realistic+ difficulty, dice chess, reloads if needed (but not used for better battle results, or recon), default core units roaster, starting Barbarossa with prestige 8136 (much collected from pre-scns).
- Some luck determinates also the happenings: what heros your core fighters have, uboats how successfull evade destroyers, how successful/fast the British sea mines can be neutralized, how many turns with bad weather will be given.
This is the area where we are focusing for the invasion:
Allright, I will explain it with text until it cannot be figured out, how to post pictures, so...
1.,
Our base of the start of the operations will be the area of Le Havre - Portsmouth.
- First is to bring here a lot of AA to protect the transported units. Also transport here the 21 cm heavy mortar and the Gustav. Time is on the essence, the mortar can be put on rail already in the first turn, while Gustav in the 2nd. Still pay attention when unpacking, because valuable units will be attacked even while defended with AA.
- Build up your fleet in France. That is tricky, it is partly a hide and run play, here the reload can help.
While you have some time to spent with hiding, the ships has to earn 10 strength about turn 8-10. The Baltic flett can and should be used first to assist Barbarossa, but they have to scheduled to arrive around turn 10 also to the area.
- All uboats, destroyers, S-boats and the Tirpitz is also needed to collected to the area so no convoy-battles!
- Hero Bf 110 should remain guarding the major cities against bombing runs, the two fighter units should try to guard the upbuilding ships and the major cities. Try to let them survive until the Fw190A appears!
2.,
First target is the strongpoint at 49:41. It can be destroyed with the above mentioned two arty. When bad weather kicks is, destroyers have to eliminate the sea mines at 49:42 first, than the 47:42.
- Also the radar shall be destroyed with capital ships and S-Boats staing there to avoid the rebuild of it. Also the coastal battery can be softened with Gustav and one S-boat to avoid rebuilt.
- Transport 11-12 strength inf and 2-3 mountain troops around the airfields at Paris.
- Place a deep diving uboat at 52:42 to block the entrance and avoid British mine to appear.
- Place the bottom mine to 37:41, the moored mine to 37:43 to block the western approaches.
3., Strongest existing armor at the time is the 14. Panzer with default overstrength of 12, upgraded on Pz IIIJ, it arrives at turn 14 to Le Havre. It will be the first unit to enter England.
- Targeted invasion point is 49:41 in bad weather, so the enemy has no clue of our intentions and will not block it therefore with fast units
- Turn 18, invasion has begun, the first turns will be really hard, because the Brits will use everything to counter our actions. First the coastal battery at 47:40 has to eliminated. With the "swimming arty" + panzer it is quite easy.
- JG 77, 54, 52 with Bf 109's should be transported here when the good weather kicks in. They need to defend the valuable capital ships and the transports and when possible the land units too.
- Turn 21, two Pz IIIJ's, two Pz IVF's with heroes and the Semovente 75/18 as the first wave.
- First make some manouvering room, advancing to west while blocking the hexes at South-London to block entering British reinforcement into the battle.
- Bristol and the Thames river is a good limit to guard.
4., Conquer London
- Beware the valuable capital ships! They are instrumental as arty, even so at this stage, when almost no land arty is yet present.
- Also it is a chess game, how to resupply the capital ships to not let them stranded without fuel. The area has luckily several available ports, but the invasion forces has also to transported from there, so a nice play is this.
- The British home fleet is a big danger, even more from the west! I try to destroy the destroyers with capital ships, and sacrifice my S-Boats and destroyers to be shot by the British capital ships, while destroying them mostly with uboats. The sealing of the western entrance is mission-critical! The eastern entrance can be mostly good guarded/blocked with 1-2 uboats with some luck, they can sometime evade the destroyers.
- Always prepare two inf/mnt units at thw two airfields next to Paris to air transport them to the airfield SW of London, when the area is cleared!
- When the nearest area is save, start transporting inf, arty and AA over, even a rec is useful. When the armor at London is defeated, you can partly send your panzers back to the mainland.
5., Goal is to conquer England before the arrival of strong US air units and to enable transport all of your strong fighters to Tunis to have air superiority there.
- It is an interesting question, how important is to capture the non-objective cities and static defenses, or advance straight to the objective cities.
