Battle of Britain ‘what if’ scenarios: Operation Sealion

[ChocksAway]

Hello, first time poster here (I posted this on BGG yesterday, but it’s probably better here!)

Been reading about the extensive wargame that was done in 1974 in the UK with experienced personnel representing Britain and Germany on Operation Sealion (the codename for the proposed German invasion). Undoubtedly the wargame had some flaws such as the map created of the British south coast offering clues to the German landing intentions. Its basic premise is that the Luftwaffe continue their initial raids on RAF infrastructure at the start of the BoB and ignore a campaign against London.

It’s a lengthy exercise so I will try to briefly summarise it here and if anyone was interested there is further reading that can be done elsewhere on the internet. It surmises that the Luftwaffe could achieve limited air superiority to enable a first wave to successfully cross the channel and land on the south coast of England. As part of the build up the Luftwaffe would try to limit access to that coast by preliminary bombing of transport infrastructure south of London.

The main capital ships of the Royal Navy would be held back at this stage to avoid being lost to air attack. British divisions on land then move to contain the German bridgehead with RAF support. Then a fateful delay to the German 2nd wave allows a large force of lighter, small and mobile Royal Navy vessels to be deployed destroying any future waves from reinforcing the small number of German troops on the south coast of England. As the navy closes a cordon around the landed force and lacking enough armour to breakthrough the invading German first wave surrenders within a short period of time having run out of ammunition.

Using the BoB starter set components, some extra planes and a small amount of ship models, I would like to try and recreate a ‘what if’ on some of this basis providing aerial combat, land and naval units. It’s a bit ambitious for a new player like me and it would be a small mission or missions as a microcosm of those proposed events although it has potential I guess for a campaign.

With Wings of Glory being a long running venture I wondered if any players had ever seen or conceived of a similar scenario or had any ideas about how best to utilise existing framework of rules to bring in other elements like naval units? Any suggestions, thoughts or comments welcome?

[flash]

Read a book on that, Martin, too many moons ago to remember much detail now, then made the mistake of lending the book and not getting it back
Fascinating subject, at the time I lived in East Sussex and would have been in sight of the Chain Home Station at RAF Pevensey if the towers hadn't been demolished. I created & played a scenario for taking the bridge at Rickney that leads north from the CH station; defended by 'Dads Army' and subsequently discovered and played the Too Fat Lardies Sealion scenarios (for their Ain't Been Shot Mum rules) a few times as some were based around where we lived and I could actually visit the ground in my travels to get a real feel for the terrain.
Never played the air side of the conflict, I would suggest you could have the CH stations as targets to bomb as a step toward air superiority for the Luftwaffe; Para/glider drops on S-Day being opposed; Targeting the invasion fleet itself.
These would likely require some after market models to make them look the part, but with 2D printing these days any thing is possible, so I wish you luck with that.    

[ChocksAway]

41 minutes ago, flash said:

Read a book on that, Martin, too many moons ago to remember much detail now, then made the mistake of lending the book and not getting it back
Fascinating subject, at the time I lived in East Sussex and would have been in sight of the Chain Home Station at RAF Pevensey if the towers hadn't been demolished. I created & played a scenario for taking the bridge at Rickney that leads north from the CH station; defended by 'Dads Army' and subsequently discovered and played the Too Fat Lardies Sealion scenarios (for their Ain't Been Shot Mum rules) a few times as some were based around where we lived and I could actually visit the ground in my travels to get a real feel for the terrain.
Never played the air side of the conflict, I would suggest you could have the CH stations as targets to bomb as a step toward air superiority for the Luftwaffe; Para/glider drops on S-Day being opposed; Targeting the invasion fleet itself.
These would likely require some after market models to make them look the part, but with 2D printing these days any thing is possible, so I wish you luck with that.    

Thanks for the ideas and with the history on your doorstep it must have been fascinating to look into it and wargame it.

Although I’ve had a book on the finer plans of Operation Sealion, including some ahem ‘interesting’ assumptions made about the resistance of groups like the scouts for instance, I hadn’t really looked at any wargame that had been done.

If you’re interested here’s what I stumbled across which piqued my interest:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion_(wargame) as I look at how to get more out of a smallish collection of WW2 Wings of Glory early war planes in Europe.  It feels like with fine tuning the air battles could be balanced and interesting with some additional land and naval objectives.

This is probably going to be a smallish project for me with some modest scaling on my part, but the scenario could lend itself to something much more ambitious.  Trying to do a huge piece with it with lots of bespoke elements would be very interesting.   

[Flying Officer Kyte]

One for a future Doncaster maybe?

Rob.

[Jager]

Certainly, a good what-if set of games.

Attacks on German shipping. More on the RN sorties against German shipping.

Attacking the beaches. Airbourne drops.

Something for everybody.

Karl

[camel crew]

On 12/8/2024 at 4:11 PM, Flying Officer Kyte said:

One for a future Doncaster maybe?

Rob.

Just (mis)read this, interpreting as an attack on Doncaster. Wonderful when your mind inserts imaginary commas

[Jager]

On 1/16/2025 at 11:24 AM, camel crew said:

Just (mis)read this, interpreting as an attack on Doncaster. Wonderful when your mind inserts imaginary commas

Rather late in the Sealion campaign, no

Karl