Longtom was 6.10 inch, 155 mm & weighed little over 30 thousand lbs, 15 tons. 4 of em would weigh about what 1 Tiger did.

 

 

The "Long Tom" weighed in at a hefty 30,600 pounds,

 

Morser 18, 8.3 inch gun. Weighs 25 ton. MFP can carry 140 tons. Look at the photo, of course it could fit on an MFP.

 

 

Weight traveling

50,045 lb1 22,700 kg1

The gun could be traversed the full 360° by a single man.¹

Er Factfinder, perhaps re-read 1st post, there is no firing from a rolling deck, I posted clearly that firing occurs only after said landing craft is on the beach, hence secured. Might be good to read before issuing comments like "tenuous grip on reality" & names like "fool" Against the rules it is. Landing craft would carry posts & other securing methods well worked out in advance in trial runs. Weight & recoil considerations are the 2 factors. The Germans did consider carrying 5.9 inch guns to the British shore for this exact purpose, to hit back at RN ships from the British side.




To strengthen German control of the Channel Narrows, the Army planned to quickly establish mobile artillery batteries along the English shoreline once a beachhead had been firmly established. Towards that end, 16th Army?s Artillerie Kommand 106 was slated to land with the second wave to provide fire protection for the transport fleet as early as possible. This unit consisted of 24 15 cm (5.9 in) guns and 72 10 cm (3.9 in) guns. About one third of them were to be deployed on English soil by the end of Sea Lion?s first week.[23]

The presence of these batteries was expected to greatly reduce the threat posed by British destroyers and smaller craft along the eastern approaches as the guns would be sited to cover the main transport routes from Dover to Calais and Hastings to Boulogne. They could not entirely protect the western approaches, but a large area of those invasion zones would still be within effective range.[23]

The British military was well aware of the dangers posed by German artillery dominating the Dover Strait and on 4 September 1940 the Chief of Naval Staff issued a memo stating that if the Germans "...could get possession of the Dover defile and capture its gun defences from us, then, holding these points on both sides of the Straits, they would be in a position largely to deny those waters to our naval forces". Should the Dover defile be lost, he concluded, the Royal Navy could do little to interrupt the flow of German supplies and reinforcements across the Channel
link

So the question remains, MFP's were heavier duty transport craft than most available 1940 barges etc. 6 inch guns posed no problem for invasion craft. 8 inch were less available, but certainly weighed less than Tiger tanks at 62 tons.

I was uncertain whether to bother to reply to you or not, but would be grateful if you could help me out by answering one or two minor queries concerning your ideas.

 

1. As there were virtually no German surface ships worthy of the name, other than a handful of destroyers/torpedo boats and

a few minesweepers, how where these barges to get across the Channel in order to set up the gun batteries in the first place?

 

2. Why would the Germans have started building landing craft in the mid-thirties, when Raeder records that until mid/late 1938 the Kriegsmarine was forbidden even to undertake theoretical tactical studies involving operations against the Royal Navy?

 

3. How many spare 8 inch guns did the Germans have in 1940 which could have been allocated to Sealion?

 

4. How successful where the well-established German batteries on the French side of the Channel against British shipping?

 

5. As the first wave of Sealion would have taken almost two weeks to land (assuming that the Royal Navy were sporting enough not to interfere), do you really believe that a second wave could have had any hope of crossing, given the fact that, because of a lack of available shipping, the first wave was unable to take  most of its transport, and all of its artillery, with it?

 

By the way, referring to the other site, I can well understand why you abandoned it, given the fact that you were completely outmatched by someone who seems to have had a vast array of facts, figures, quotations, and references at his fingertips. As I read it, you started the exchange of insults, when perhaps responding to the points your opponent made might have been more productive, and could at least have left you with some credibility. I observe that you have already started pursuing the same course of action here, by misquoting my site name.

How much streanth did the Germans really need to land? 

Ocupying all of Briton and making it pay taxes was a pipe dream. But  Holding some air heads that denied England the use of critical rail lines, air feilds or radar site at the critical time was posibal. 

Braking the British will to resist with air power was a stupid goal. Braking British air power with comados and then closing their ports with air and subs is much beter. Even a torpedo boat is a winning asset if it has air suport and the British ships do not.  

German guns on Englands coast are usefull after the RAF and RN are degraded and your improving conditions for light ground forces holding pockets in southern england by opening a sea supply rought as the battle is winding down.

Remember the British armor unites were in Egypt and the armys guns were largly left in France.  Germans don,t need armor or big guns they need surprise and good target selection. 

You don't seem to know much about the Morser 18. If you did, you would have realised that, in common with many pieces of heavy ordnance, the weapon was transported in two sections, with the barrel on a separate trailer. Are you proposing that this gun would be manhandled off the landing craft, dragged into position, and assembled, again by hand, on soft sand, shingle, or shale, all the time under fire from coastal defences ranging from small arms to emplaced artillery, not to mention naval gunfire? Assembling the gun, even with the necessary equipment to hand, was not a quick task, and many Morser 18s were captured intact in N. Africa because their crews had insufficient time to break them down into the two transportable parts.

 

Perhaps the British defenders, realizing that firing on the gun crews as they were attempting to put the gun together was not quite cricket, would have refrained from so doing, but frankly I doubt it.

 

Additionally, the gun was usually allocated to independent artillery units, effectively the equivalent of British Corps Artillery, and required an observer nearer the front line to report fall of shot. Where would these have come from, or been sited if the guns were intended to engage the Royal Navy?

 

By the way, I think I know who Doveton is (or at least a contact of mine does). If I am right, he is actually our guest lecturer this coming Friday ( subject: Royal Naval Carrier Aviation between the Wars). Would you like me to pass on your best wishes?

The Germans would have needed a very substantial force to have any hope of success. Do not be fooled by the myth that Britain in the Summer of 1940 was largely defenceless and dependant on Fighter Command for survival. The Royal Navy had sixty or so destroyers and cruisers waiting to intercept the invasion convoys, together with several hundred support craft. The Luftwaffe, despite the subsequent legend was not, in 1940, very good at hitting ships at sea, and in any case the invasion convoys were intended to cross at night in order to make possible a dawn landing, so air cover could not have operated. Furthermore, the Germans had virtually no surface fleet worthy of the name, whilst the Royal Navy had exercised extensively in night actions, and was extremely proficient at them.

 

By September 1940, the British Army had some 34 operational divisions, a considerable proportion of which were allocated to coastal defence. Admittedly, some of these were not at full strength, but they would have been supplemented in the invasion area by the Home Guard, who, again despite the myth, were well-equipped and a considerable number of whose members were former servicemen in their early 40s, who had seen action in World War 1. As the German first wave was intended to consist of nine divisions, which would be lacking most of their motor transport and all of their divisional artillery due to lack of shipping space, and would have taken eleven days to land, when General Halder called the invasion plan 'putting the troops through a meat grinder' it is possible to sympathise with his view!

 

The Luftwaffe had very few operational JU52 transport aircraft, so could not have landed airborne troops in large enough numbers (let alone re-supplied them), and such troops would have been almost helpless against even the light tanks which composed a considerable proportion of British armoured strength.

 

Finally, U-boats. In September 1940 Germany had only 61 boats in commission, of which 34 were training boats or new boats working up. Of the remaining 27, some were Type IXs, unsuited for operations in shallow coastal waters, so the idea of hundreds of boats lying in wait for the Royal Navy is not borne out by the facts.

 

To be honest, however, much of the above doesn't really apply, as it is unlikely, given the enormous inequality in naval forces involved, than any organized German force would have got ashore at all.