Bingo

True. People seem to forget that Stukas have sunk battleships. The may have sucked in air to air, but they had friends to help with that. The RN was pretty damn good, but they were NOT invulnerable to German air attack, and they knew it. If they were, they could have just parked 10 miles off 'Fortress Europe" throughout the entire war and pounded away at the Nazis.

For sea lion to ever work, they'd need pretty much a suicidal effort from mine layers, uboats, and any surface vessels they had left plus major and consistent luftwaffe attacks on the RN that perhaps wouldn't score a complete victory, but they didn't really need to, they just need to keep them busy so they aren't in invasion-hunting-mode. Resupply would have to be mad dashes a night, with good radio/light discipline and harassing night luftwaffe attacks to occupy the limeys.

They'd also need a LOT of gliders. Lots of great landing zones for gliders in southern parts of England. Getting the max # of men / guns on the ground from the air would be critical, because the RN would probably be attacking / killing surface resupply as fast as they could.

Stukas were as vulnerable to British fighters, as the buffet at the Golden Corral with a fit kid locked inside.  

There's a reason they quickly stopped using them in the BoB.

The Germans don't just have to get past the Royal Navy once, they have to hold them off indefinitely.  

The invasion force can only be supported by ships.  They could take half of southern England and still lose, because the Royal Navy will sink anything they put sea.  Their repurposed canal barges are going to have a bad day in open sea.  

The other thing most people are unaware of, had the RAF loses in southern England become too heavy, they had already planned to move all their squadrons back to bases north of London, where they would always maintain air superiority as this was beyond the range of the 109s.  

Just due to the geography of the UK, range of the 109 and the location of the fighter bases to the north, the RAF couldn't ever lose.  

Getting any German naval force past the Royal Navy and then effecting a landing in southern England is laughable.  The naval guys on BOTH sides said so.  

There's a very good reason the idea was shit-canned.  

The German's could never defeat the British, but they could keep them off the continent.

We're living in fantasy land in this thread anyway, how about a combined Italian / IJN fleet attacks the RN to keep them busy? Heh heh.

You are almost certainly right. But it’s still fun to speculate about.

Yeah this has been a really fun thread.

The only battleships I can find recorded as being sunk by JU-87s were two Greek ships bought from the US Navy that were launched in 1904 and 1908.

Russian battleship, with either 1 or 2 bomb hit(s) (depending on source) / secondary explosions. Hans Ulrich Rudel. Early in the war, especially, no one was very good at stopping dive bomber attacks on ships.

We ALL know Hitler lost the war because the Spear of Destiny was stolen from him in a daring raid in ‘44.

Anything else is lies and bullshit