Originally Posted by Leon Jabachjabicz
No Torpedo planes for Op SEALION - what rubbish! Ever heard of the Heinkel 115?... On that day, at the very first light, Luftwaffe’s Küstenfligergruppen (Coastal Reconnaissance Groups) swept the area between Bergen and the Orkneys with 28 He 115 seaplanes
Please read my post again. I didn't say the Luftwaffe had
no torpedo planes. I said:
Originally Posted by FODPlod
So how many effective torpedo bombers did the Luftwaffe have in 1940? They'd have needed hundreds to achieve any success.
So, the Germans had at least 28 torpedo-carrying seaplanes on 9 Apr 1940 but none of them actually hit anything? What's more, even subsequent attacks by 88 He 111s and Ju 88s and further heavy raids only succeeded in sinking one destroyer and damaging a few other ships? None of this prevented the Royal Navy from sinking two of the ten German destroyers and several transports at the First Battle of Narvik the next day or putting the remaining eight German destroyers out of action at the Second Battle of Narvik three days after that.
Some people underestimate the number of naval units (
link) the Luftwaffe would have had to neutralise for any invasion to succeed. Even MTBs, MLs, armed yachts and the dozens of armed trawlers with 12 pdrs, 4 inch, 20mm and Lewis guns would have posed a significant threat to any German invasion barges. They would probably have achieved more by capsizing the barges with their wakes or ramming them. How much less effective do you think the Luftwaffe would have been once the cats were in among the pigeons?
Originally Posted by Leon Jabachjabicz
So might you change your opinion on your facts?
No. I didn't say our ships wouldn't have suffered losses, possibly quite heavy. However, everything said to date indicates that torpedo and bombing attacks on ships were still very much hit and miss affairs. Even in the absence of air cover, the misses outnumbered the hits many times over. Naturally, I would not expect the RAF and FAA to have stood idly by while all this was going on.
Next?