Category: Well I thought it was neat!
I recently did a post regarding the competing forces for Operation Seelöwe (Sea Lion), the proposed German invasion of Britain in 1940. This post generated a lot of comments in which readers overwhelmingly made two points. The first was that the invasion would have failed had the Germans attempted it. The second was that the Germans were never really serious about Seelöwe in the first place. Given these responses, I thought I would add my perspective on the matter.
In terms of the potential success of Seelöwe, I agree that it almost certainly would have failed. Of course, I am now entering the realm of speculation where there is a wide range of potential outcomes based upon a variety of variables. No one can say for certain what would have happened, but I think the overwhelming odds are that the invasion would have miscarried with the only real question being how bad the competing casualties were. The primary reason for this is that Germany simply lacked the sealift capacity to carry out the invasion and its all-important logistical follow-up. When you consider the massive armada that the Allies used to carry out the Normandy invasion (which took years to assemble and included thousands of specialised landing and support craft) the notion of launching an invasion using towed barges across the English Channel seems ludicrous. Of course, a related factor was the naval imbalance that existed between the Royal Navy and the German Kriegsmarine. Not only did the Germans lack the naval assets to carry out Seelöwe, but they lacked the warship strength to defend it against the massive Royal Navy response that surely would have occurred.
To compensate for this, the Germans proposed to use air power as a means to neutralise Britain’s massive naval advantage, but it is unlikely that this would have been decisive. The Luftwaffe was unable to stop the Dunkirk evacuation or the running of British convoys through the English Channel during the Battle of Britain, so it is equally unlikely it could have stopped the inevitable British counterattacks that would have occurred.
There certainly would have been losses, but enough British warships would have gotten through to cause mayhem. Even with complete air superiority, the Germans could not entirely hold back the Royal Navy. Of course, the Germans did not attain air superiority, and they never really had the capacity to destroy the RAF.
Had the situation become bad enough to compel the RAF to abandon its forward airfields in southern England, all it had to do was pull its forces back into the interior of the country beyond the range of the German Bf 109 fighters. There, the British could husband their strength until the invasion occurred and then re-engage.
A final point is that even if the Germans had managed to get ashore and keep their forces adequately supplied, they would have faced a strong British army that almost certainly would have outnumbered them and would have put up a stout defence. If there is any doubt about the army’s doggedness, all one need do is look at its performance during the fighting in France and Belgium.
At no time during this fighting were the Germans ever able to attain a breakthrough against any of the main British defensive lines. This despite the fact that the Germans carried out multiple attacks using several divisions against these positions.
In most cases, the British only gave ground when events on their flanks or the overall military situation compelled them to do so. Then, when on the move, the British maintained their cohesion and fighting efficiency. A prime example of this was the retreat to Dunkirk during which the army carried out a successful fighting withdrawal despite interference from two German armies and an exposed northern flank. Given this record, it seems likely that the British army would have been a formidable opponent in the defence of its homeland.
Turning now to the second question as to whether the Germans ever really intended to carry out Seelöwe, I think the answer is a qualified no. In my opinion, the proposed undertaking was fundamentally a massive bluff to put pressure on the British to agree to a negotiated settlement.
This is not to say that the entire undertaking was fake, as the Germans did make major preparations to carry it out including the assembly of the ground and naval forces involved. The Germans proceeded as if the invasion was real, and it is possible that it might have been launched had the conditions been right. Sometimes proposed actions can take on a life of their own, and even though the Germans were not keen on carrying out Seelöwe, the momentum of events might have brought it about anyway. When conducting a bluff, fate sometimes compels you to carry it out.
Had the Germans believed they had attained the prerequisite air superiority; they might have attempted the invasion as to do otherwise would have been an affront to their perceived superiority. In this regard, it is reasonable to believe that the Germans were suffering from a strong case of victory disease, and this sense of invincibility might have coloured their decision-making process.
As it was, the Germans did not attain the prerequisite air superiority thus prompting Hitler to cancel Seelöwe. In attaining this outcome, the British managed to do something that seven other European nations had failed to do – maintain their independence in the face of German aggression.
For the Germans, this failure represented the first significant check to their strategic ambitions. It would not be the last. Pictured here are troops of the Seaforth Highlanders on guard duty on chalk clifftops near Dover in the 1940–41 timeframe. Taylor (Lt), War Office official photographer, Public Domain. For more information on this and other related topics, see The Thin Khaki Line, An Operational History of the British and Commonwealth Armies during World War II.
Fear of recoil can turn into a longing for more kick.
I have a confession to make. For years after I first started shooting, I was a little apprehensive about recoil. I’d grown up on a steady diet of mythology, folk wisdom and clichés.
I was pretty sure that a .45 ACP, as fired from an M1911, was a lot of recoil. After all, Ian Hogg described it as being some sort of brutish hand-howitzer in all the coffee-table, military-firearms history books I’d read.
It didn’t help that I barely knew how to properly grasp a handgun at the time, holding it way too low on the grip and thereby giving old Isaac Newton’s laws plenty of fulcrum to have their way with my pipestem forearms. Therefore, for a long time, my personal recoil ceiling in pistols was somewhere in the .40 S&W or .45 ACP range.
At the first gun store where I worked, my horizons started to broaden. I picked up my first .357 Mag., in the shape of a Rossi M971, and then a 7.5-inch Ruger Blackhawk in .45 Colt. Some friends were kind enough to correct my … uh, “half-fast” grip technique on the gun, and my boss convinced me to try a couple of magazines through his Desert Eagle in .50 AE.
I won’t say I was turning into a recoil junkie, but I was progressing beyond more than just social recoil enjoyment. So much so, I purchased a compact Glock G29 in 10 mm.
There was still a frontier I was scared to cross. I’d grown up on a steady diet of the dialog in “Dirty Harry” movies, and the hype and mythology surrounding the .44 Mag. cartridge had seeped deeply into my hindbrain, somewhere down around the medulla oblongata. If it was the most powerful handgun in the world that would “blow a man’s head clean off,” what would it do to my poor hands?
Ah, but then we got a nice-looking, stainless-steel Ruger Bisley Vaquero in on trade. It was in like-new condition, all shiny and chambered in the forbidden .44 Mag. I was hypnotized by that wheelgun.
The Blackhawk already had me kinda digging single-actions, and I was in the middle of a phase of binge-watching modern Westerns like “Young Guns” and “Unforgiven” and, of course, I had watched “Tombstone” until I’d about worn the magnetic particles off the VHS tape and had the dialog all-but memorized.
I’d read a bunch of Taffin and Spangenberger. I knew that the Bisley grip shape was supposedly aces for taming recoil in old-school Single Action Army clones. My rationalization motors went into high gear and, before I knew it, I’d talked myself into buying a .44 Mag.
Unfortunately, the very day I bought that Ruger, I had a motorcycle wreck on the way home from the shop. While the gun escaped with minor scuffs, I broke my right radius and ulna (among other bones) and so I got to occupy the summer recuperating and working up an existential dread about what that recoil would be like on my freshly knit wrist.
Finally, that autumn, the fateful range trip arrived and—hey!—it wasn’t bad at all! In fact, with regular 240-grain range fodder, it was just loud and thumpy enough to be fun. I’d spent all that time and energy worrying about nothing.
Fast-forward a couple of decades and I’m living in Indiana. The Vaquero’s long gone, and the only .44 Mag I now have is a 3-inch Smith & Wesson Model 629. I’m in the process of thinning the herd of a lot of my more modern wheelguns in favor of older, more collectible pieces—but I just can’t let that Smith go.
There’s no practical reason for me to be holding onto a short-barreled .44 Mag. If a bear is sighted in the Hoosier state, it’s probably lost and will wander back into Michigan shortly.
It’s not really any good for hunting—or, rather, if I decided to take up handgun hunting for whitetail, I can think of dozens of better choices, like the .243 Win. T/C Encore I have in case that specific contingency arises.
(Besides, it’s one of those 1980s pre-Endurance Package 629-1s, so using anything hotter than typical 240-grain commercially loaded range fodder risks the old gun doing the “Wheee! My cylinder’s turning backwards!” trick under recoil.)
Yet, I just can’t bring myself to part with it. For starters, it’s fun to shoot, and as I have written many times before, “it’s fun” is a legitimate reason to own a firearm.
Secondly, if I sold that 629, then I wouldn’t own a .44 Mag., and what would Inspector Harry Callahan think of me? Not much, that’s what. It’d feel—un-American, somehow. Plus, y’know, I have all that .44 Mag. ammo in storage and I need something nice to fire it through, so there’s that.
While it’s interesting to look back at how my perceptions of recoil have changed over time, it is also worth noting that everyone’s perceptions have shifted. The recoil Overton Window—the range of “normal”—has been moved, if you will.
Reading the firearm literature from the 1930s, when together Elmer Keith and Daniel B. Wesson developed the .357 Mag., it was described as being only suitable for the most hairy-chested he-men due to its mighty recoil energy.
Granted, original .357 Mag. loads were spicier than the typical generic range loads of today, launching a 158-grain Keith semi-wadcutter at something like 1,500 fps. However, that was being fired out of a classic all-steel, long-barreled, large-frame Smith & Wesson Registered Magnum.
Nowadays we’ve seen the same cartridge offered in compact five-shooters with exotic alloy frames that weigh less than a pound. Now, those have some nasty recoil to them. But .357 Mag. in a steel N-frame is seen as a pussycat. Meanwhile the big-bore world has seen a similar recalibration. When there are both .454 Casull and .500 S&W Mag. revolvers loose upon the land—to say nothing of scandium-frame, lightweight .44 Mag. revolvers—suddenly a steel .44 Mag. doesn’t seem that bad.
Oh, and that T/C Encore? It turns out they made a .405 Win. barrel for those. If I have a Model 629 for just in case a bear wanders down from Michigan, then it makes sense to have a rifle chambered in Teddy Roosevelt’s “big medicine” for just in case a lion escapes from the zoo, so I got a 209×50 Encore muzzleloading rifle (Practical! Can be used for deer hunting!) and a .405 Win. barrel for it (Silly! Just for fun at the range!).
The .405 Win. isn’t all that outrageous in the recoil department, at least in the grand scheme of rifle cartridges, but when fired out of a lightweight single-shot, it’ll get your attention. I’ve got a couple of hundred rounds of ammo, and I’m not ashamed to say that’s probably a lifetime supply.
Just be careful Dear Readers as this stuff will really sneak up on you. Then it will give you a sucker punch! Grumpy
Well I thought it was both cute and funny! Grumpy