World War 2 Talk - View Single Post - How would the Home Guard have actually fared?

phylo_roadking · 27-10-2008, 04:58 AM

Coming late to this, but British anti-invasion plans have always been an interest of mine...

First of all, the details of the FJ's opertions as planned for Sealion. Hitler's first plans - made while Student was recovering from his head injuries from Holland - were that the FJ would only be used to take coastal defences and batteries on the right and left flanks of the invasion beachead...i.e. similar to their operations against Eben Emael and others. The rest of the FJ and airlanding divisions were relegated to the General reserve for Sealion.
There were a number of reasons for this -
The LW had from battlefield losses or later write-offs lost over 200 Ju52s in the Low Countries to add to the 180 lost in Norway; that was over half the Ju 52 fleet as of the late spring of 1940.
Also, Rotterdam and the Hague had taught the Germans that dropping paratroops far behind enemy lines to take and HOLD objective pending relief eventually turned ALL focus of a campaign onto that relief. They didn't want to drop troops into Kent in great numbers...for THEN the whole focus of the landings would simply be to dash to the relief of the FJ!
Student had a senior officer dash to lobby for extra ops, and a number of airfields CLOSE to the beachead were identified that they could take - but far smaller ops than the failed raids in Holland on similar and the costly ops in Norway.

As for the Home Guard - let's face it, the whole idea wasn't for the Home Guard to STOP the Germans, it was to "sponge" up and slow down the Wehrmacht as it marched across Kent and Sussex, and to give the regular Army time to formate on the GHQ and London Stop Lines. And that's about all. However, it should be noted that in a few months over 3,000 assorted pillboxes and obstacles were created in the South of England...

However, by 1941 the story was VERY different; the Home Guard had had a year of dedicated training and were starting to share "specialised" duties with regular forces. Gradually they came to take over about 65% of the UK's coastal batteries, releasing RA and RN personnel for othjer duties. They guarded POW camps, industrial sites, marshalling yards etc. - and eventually also filled about 50% of the files in AA Command in the last two years of the war IIRC. ALSO...week by week their originally makeshift defences at road junctions etc. became highly developed emplacements as good as any Flanders' strongpoints of WWI! From which they'd have stood a far better chance of resisting attack than they would have done a year earlier!

Regarding the availability of regular and organised forces in the UK - as well as the fast-re-equiping British Army - it was back up on establishemnt of artillery by the middle of August, far sooner than anyone expected - and the Canadian First Infantry division....there was a second Canadian infantry division training in the UK, and the beginnings of a Canadian armoured division IIRC....AND one badly-remembered and recorded Australian infantry division in the Home Counties!

27-10-2008, 04:58 AM	#25 (permalink)
phylo_roadking Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: feels like Brigadoon! Posts: 118	Coming late to this, but British anti-invasion plans have always been an interest of mine... First of all, the details of the FJ's opertions as planned for Sealion. Hitler's first plans - made while Student was recovering from his head injuries from Holland - were that the FJ would only be used to take coastal defences and batteries on the right and left flanks of the invasion beachead...i.e. similar to their operations against Eben Emael and others. The rest of the FJ and airlanding divisions were relegated to the General reserve for Sealion. There were a number of reasons for this - The LW had from battlefield losses or later write-offs lost over 200 Ju52s in the Low Countries to add to the 180 lost in Norway; that was over half the Ju 52 fleet as of the late spring of 1940. Also, Rotterdam and the Hague had taught the Germans that dropping paratroops far behind enemy lines to take and HOLD objective pending relief eventually turned ALL focus of a campaign onto that relief. They didn't want to drop troops into Kent in great numbers...for THEN the whole focus of the landings would simply be to dash to the relief of the FJ! Student had a senior officer dash to lobby for extra ops, and a number of airfields CLOSE to the beachead were identified that they could take - but far smaller ops than the failed raids in Holland on similar and the costly ops in Norway. As for the Home Guard - let's face it, the whole idea wasn't for the Home Guard to STOP the Germans, it was to "sponge" up and slow down the Wehrmacht as it marched across Kent and Sussex, and to give the regular Army time to formate on the GHQ and London Stop Lines. And that's about all. However, it should be noted that in a few months over 3,000 assorted pillboxes and obstacles were created in the South of England... However, by 1941 the story was VERY different; the Home Guard had had a year of dedicated training and were starting to share "specialised" duties with regular forces. Gradually they came to take over about 65% of the UK's coastal batteries, releasing RA and RN personnel for othjer duties. They guarded POW camps, industrial sites, marshalling yards etc. - and eventually also filled about 50% of the files in AA Command in the last two years of the war IIRC. ALSO...week by week their originally makeshift defences at road junctions etc. became highly developed emplacements as good as any Flanders' strongpoints of WWI! From which they'd have stood a far better chance of resisting attack than they would have done a year earlier! Regarding the availability of regular and organised forces in the UK - as well as the fast-re-equiping British Army - it was back up on establishemnt of artillery by the middle of August, far sooner than anyone expected - and the Canadian First Infantry division....there was a second Canadian infantry division training in the UK, and the beginnings of a Canadian armoured division IIRC....AND one badly-remembered and recorded Australian infantry division in the Home Counties!