Operation Sealion - Part 2

[Phil Perry]

Operation Sealion – Part 2

 

1st April 2018

 

 

Securing the Home Front, Politics and Preparations

 

Somewhat ironically, it was the disastrous Norway campaign of April – June 1940 that bolstered the British chances of resisting a German invasion later in the year. Despite German success in the land campaign, the Kriegsmarine received a severe mauling at the hands of the Royal Navy and crucially, light cruisers and destroyers had the highest attrition rates. These ships would be needed to escort and protect the invasion convoys across the English Channel. The seizing of Denmark and the Invasion of Norway was an extremely risky undertaking for the Kriegsmarine. The Royal Navy was much stronger and the Germans lost four cruisers, ten destroyers, three U-boats and a torpedo boat. The British lost an aircraft carrier, the Glorious, two cruisers nine destroyers and six submarines. However, the Royal Navy was much stronger and able to sustain these losses with no loss of capability. Admiral Raeder later admitted: “The losses the Kriegsmarine suffered in doing its part weighed heavily upon us for the rest of the war.”

 

Perhaps even more ironically, there was widespread public fury at the inept handling of the Norwegian campaign by Chamberlain’s Government. The man who as First Lord of the Admiralty had masterminded the campaign, gained the most from it politically. There was a public backlash against the previous years’ policies of appeasement and Churchill was remembered for his very vocal opposition to the appeasement strategy of Chamberlain and the Government. There was a general feeling that Chamberlain and his Cabinet were not suited to the rigours of governing in wartime. Churchill on the other hand was seen as possessing boundless energy and optimism, but enemies considered him reckless, particularly in the higher ranks of the Royal Navy, many of whom could remember Gallipoli. Nevertheless, come the hour, come the man and when the Germans invaded the Low Countries and Belgium on 10th May 1940, Chamberlain had to go. Churchill was summoned to the Palace and instructed by King George VI to form a new government.

 

The inter-war years had seen the massive advance of technology, specifically in the performance of aircraft and the evolution of air power doctrine. The more truculent areas of the British Empire had been policed from the air, mainly because it was cheap and the Treasury didn’t want to spend unnecessary money on expensive Army units to sun themselves or heaven forbid, rearmament. Air power doctrine was evolving rapidly, unlike at least in Britain and France, Land doctrine, which seemed to have learned the wrong lessons from the First World War, the Maginot Line being a case in point. However, there were far-sighted military men such as Liddell Hart, who had proposed that infantry be carried along with the fast-moving armoured formations. Due to the work of these pioneers, the British Army of 1939 was truly a mechanised force. In 1940 at the height of the Blitzkrieg, the German Army was still heavily reliant of horses to move its artillery. By being proponents of two of the essential tenets of the principles of war: concentration of force and economy of effort, the Germans were able to defeat the second largest army in the world and a modern, mechanised BEF.

 

The perceived wisdom that “The Bomber Will Always Get Through,” had clouded both military and political thinking. The use of area bombing as a weapon of terror in the Spanish Civil War had skewed perception of the actual effectiveness of the aircraft as a weapon of war. Even with over 1,500 front-line bombers and the latest in technology, Air Chief Marshall Harris had been unable to break the will of the German People or overcome their fear of the Gestapo.

 

But it had one galvanising effect insofar as a Home Office committee was created in 1935, the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Department. Its remit was to coordinate passive air defence within the British Isles. In 1937 the Air Raid Wardens’ Service was created with the aim of recruiting 800,000 volunteers. On 1 January 1938, the Air Raid Precautions Act came into force. This compelled all local authorities to begin creating their own ARP services. With the threat of war imminent in 1939, the Home Office issued dozens of leaflets advising people on how to protect themselves from the inevitable air war to follow.

 

The setting up of the ARP was the beginning of the networks of volunteers who would become a highly trained and effective civil defence force. They would consist of:

 

Wardens. ARP wardens ensured the blackout was observed, sounded air raid sirens, safely guided people into public air raid shelters, issued and checked gas masks, evacuated areas around unexploded bombs, rescued people where possible from bomb damaged properties, located temporary accommodation for those who had been bombed out, and reporting to their Control Centre about incidents, fires, etc. and to call in other services as required.

 

Report and Control. Central headquarters that received information from wardens and messengers and managed the delivery of the relevant services needed to deal with each incident.

 

Messengers. Often Boy Scouts or Boys Brigade members aged between 14 and 18 as messengers or runners would take messages from wardens and carry them to either the sector post or the Control Centre. Bombing would sometimes cut telephone lines and messengers performed an important role in giving the ARP services a fuller picture of events.

 

First Aid Parties. Trained to give first response first aid to those injured in bombing incidents.

 

Ambulance drivers. Casualties from bombing were taken to First Aid Posts or hospital by volunteer drivers. There were also stretcher parties that carried the injured to posts.

 

Rescue services. The rescue services were involved in getting the dead and injured out of bombed premises.

 

 

Burberry wasn’t always the Haute Couture of the Chavs

 

Around this time, ideas were circulated about recruiting a citizen army of volunteers in order to provide local, community defence in the eventuality of war or invasion. The Army was unhappy at the suggestion because it was felt that a new formation of this kind would dilute the Territorial Army concept, and a large number of politicians were extremely unhappy with the idea of a civilian force having access to weapons. However, the invasion of the Low Countries and Belgium and lurid tales of German paratroopers dressed as nuns descending on a helpless population galvanised an otherwise reluctant establishment.

 

The Government announced the creation of the Local Defence Volunteers on 14th May 1940 with the initial specific purpose of dealing with German Paratroopers, such was the level of paranoia the use of Fallschirmjäger in Norway and The Low Countries had engendered. Within twenty-four hours, 250,000 men had signed up. While this commendable response was a sign of the times, so was the shortages of uniforms, weapons and other equipment and training. There was also an undercurrent of scepticism directed at the new force, many noting that the parade timings seemed to coincide with pub opening hours. The LDV was known in some circles as the Look, Duck and Vanish, or the Last Desperate Venture. Initially weapons consisted of shotguns, muskets, blunderbuss, swords and of course, pitchforks.

 

While many were indeed veterans from of the Boer, Sudan and World War One, the average age of the LDV was thirty-five. There were doubts about the use of LDV as the title of these units and Churchill particularly disliked the formation’s name. On 22nd June Churchill decreed that the force would be known as the Home Guard. As with all organisations, some were good and some weren’t. Those units with men who had served in the previous war and took discipline seriously became as good as regular troops. Others with lazy instructors became drinking clubs and would likely have been more of a liability in the event of invasion. During one training exercise, a reviewing officer asked a member of the Home Guard: “What steps would you take if you saw German paratroops descending?” “Bloody long ones,” came the reply.

 

Initially finding uniforms and weapons was problematic and the Regular Army had its own problems re-equipping. An exotic selection of weapons came from America, including 1918 vintage machine guns and Winchester rifles from the reforming cavalry units. Improvisation was a must and some units were quite ingenious in the construction of devilish contraptions of killing.

 

And some Home Guard units were so good and so well trained, their existence was a state secret. Britain was the only country that created a multi-layered resistance and guerrilla movement that was state sanctioned. The purpose of the Auxiliary Units was to resist enemy occupation by sabotage, mass murder and the killing of collaborators. They were secretly recruited from the very best of the Home Guard and were told in no uncertain terms that they would not survive and may live for a maximum of two weeks. In that time they were to raise hell. They called themselves “Scallywags” and their modus operandi was known as “Scallywagging.”

 

 

Remains of an Auxiliary Unit OB at Wangford and Uggeshall, Suffolk

 

They were generally farmers, landowners and poachers, men who knew the country. They operated in units of four or a maximum of eight. Each Patrol was a self-contained cell, expected to be self-sufficient and operationally autonomous in the case of invasion, generally operating within a 15-mile radius. They were provided with elaborately concealed underground Operational Bases (OB), usually built by the Royal Engineers in a local woodland, with a camouflaged entrance and emergency escape tunnel. It is thought that 400 to 500 such OBs were constructed. Some Patrols had an additional concealed Observation Post and/or underground ammunition store.

 

Patrols were provided with a selection of the latest weapons including a silenced pistol or Thompson sub machine gun and Fairbairn-Sykes knives, quantities of plastic explosive, incendiary devices, and food to last for two weeks. Members anticipated being shot if they were captured, and were expected to shoot themselves first rather than be taken alive. The Auxiliary Units were disbanded in 1944 and many joined the SAS or Jedburgh Teams.

 

Blown Periphery 2018

 

Going postal blog

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Operation Sealion – Part 3

 

8th April 2018

 

 

Fifth Columnists, Useful Idiots, Traitors and Spies

 

There was much concern not just from an external invasion, but also the activities of some people in Britain and their lack of wholehearted commitment to the fight ahead. Traitors and German agents were seen everywhere and the paranoia rose to a height after the Norwegian campaign and the activities of the quislings. The Tory arch-appeaser, Sir Samuel Hoare known as “Slippery Sam” was a case in point. He was loathed by Churchill, who on coming to power ordered his expulsion from Downing Street circles. “Tell that man if his room is not cleared by two o’ clock I will make him Minister for Iceland.”

 

There was a more obvious candidate for suspicion, close surveillance and incarceration, Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats. Former Labout MP and Leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Mosley had become more brazen with his attacks of the Government throughout the so-called Phoney War, although this period was anything but phoney for members of Bomber Command and the Royal Navy. His Britain First rally at the Earls Court Exhibition Hall on 16 July 1939 was the biggest indoor political rally in British history.

 

Unbeknown to Mosley the BUF and been comprehensively infiltrated by MI5 and while his ongoing agitation was tolerated, when the Battle of France commenced in May 1940, Mosley was interned on 24th May 1940 under the Emergency Powers Act, 18B. Mosley’s internment was very cosy compared to other internees. He lived in a house in the grounds of Holloway Prison with his wife, where his son Max was born in 1940.

 

The level of tolerance shown by the authorities to potentially dangerous and toxic individuals and organisations seems not unlike the authority’s tolerance of our current, far more dangerous fifth column. The then Home Secretary Sir John Anderson displayed remarkable forbearance and even though the Nazi/Soviet Pact had carved up Poland between the two countries, the British Communist Party was allowed to freely operate. The War Secretary Anthony Eden became exasperated with Anderson and many of his critics felt that the Home Secretary was failing to grasp the realities of War.

 

However, a plot uncovered in London revealed a number of establishment figures, a global network and a plan that could have brought down the President of the United States. At its heart were three figures, Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian who wanted to see the Third Reich triumphant in heading a united Europe. Captain Maule “Jock” Ramsey, a Conservative MP, war veteran and rabid anti-Semite and Tyler Kent, a US Foreign Service clerk with a penchant for the high-life. This gang of three formed part of the Right Club, a network that was virulently anti-Semitic and wanted to overthrow the British War effort. Another key player was Joseph P Kennedy US Ambassador to London, who held a long hatred of Britain and her Empire and made no secret of his admiration of Hitler.

 

Once again MI5 had infiltrated the Right Club and was astonished at just how widespread the network of Nazi sympathisers was and how it riddled British society like cancer. MI5 infiltrated a number of women into the Right Club who posed as extreme right-wing acolytes and they became trusted within the organisation. What caused the authorities to act was Tyler Kent’s passing of sensitive documents to the Soviets and then onto the Nazis. While Kent had diplomatic immunity, on 20th May Special Branch arrested Wolkoff in the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington. Kent’s flat was searched and a veritable treasure trove of treachery found. Ramsey was also arrested that day and interned while Kent was deported and prosecuted in America.

 

Finally Anderson acted and had Mosley and large number of the BUF arrested along with most of the 73,533 Germans and Austrians who were over sixteen and resident in the UK. Those not interned in camps on the Isle of Man had restrictions placed on their movement and they were not allowed radios, bicycles or maps. Refugees from Nazi Germany had no restrictions placed on them, and many went on to serve in the Special Forces or as specialist radio operators in Bomber Command. They flew as an eighth crew member on 101 Squadron Lancasters and attempted to spoof the German night fighters, by giving false vectors over frequency agile radio sets.

 

 

King Edward VIII and Britain’s Narrow Escape

 

Mainstream British newspapers such as the Daily Mail regularly heaped praise on the Third Reich and published membership forms for Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists so that their readers might have the opportunity to join. And while the majority of the British people were wise enough to have no truck with fascism and the Nazis, there were elements of the British Establishment who thought that Hitler should be either appeased or embraced. Indeed, appeasement was the policy of the British government, firstly under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and then his successor Neville Chamberlain, well-meaning politicians both who simply couldn’t accept that anyone could be as evil and devious as Hitler. Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George visited Hitler in 1936 and was full of praise, considering him the “George Washington of Germany”. Newspaper barons Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere, who were to be instrumental in hushing up King Edward’s affair with Wallis Simpson, were lavishly entertained by Hitler and subsequently praised him in their newspapers.

 

Following his abdication as King Edward VIII the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson settled in France until war broke out and they were brought back to Britain by Mountbatten on board HMS Kelly. The German Ambassador to the Hague clamed in February 1940 that the Duke had leaked plans for the defence of Belgium, a claim that the Duke denied. When the Germans invaded northern France the Duke and Duchess headed south, first to Spain, then to Lisbon where they lived in the home of Ricardo de Espírito Santo, a Portuguese banker with both British and German contacts. The kindest thing I can think to say about the Duke of Windsor is that he had a poor sense of moral judgement.

 

The German Abwehr concocted a plan codenamed Operation Willi to lure the Duke back to Spain where he could be abducted and taken to Germany as a “Leader of Britain in Waiting.” Lord Caldecote wrote a warning to Churchill: “(the Duke) is well-known to be pro-Nazi and he may become a centre of intrigue. Churchill threatened the Duke with a court-martial if he did not return to British soil. In July 1940, Edward was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. The Duke and Duchess left Lisbon on 1 August aboard the American Export Lines steamship Excalibur, which was specially diverted from its usual direct course to New York City so that they could be dropped off at Bermuda on the 9th. They left Bermuda for Nassau on the Canadian steamship Lady Somers on 15 August, arriving two days later.

 

The Duke did not enjoy being governor and referred to the islands as “a third-class British colony”. The British Foreign Office objected when the Duke and Duchess planned to cruise aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate, Axel Wenner-Gren, whom British and American intelligence believed to be a close friend of Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring. The Duke remained in the Bahamas for the rest of the war where he could do as little damage as possible. Sensible British patriots may have breathed a sigh of relief.

 

The Germans had already set up spy networks in Britain prior to the outbreak of war and some of our friends over in the Republic of Ireland were only too keen to support any treachery against the hated Brits. But these networks had been comprehensively infiltrated by MI5, much in the same way as the Right Club. Once the war had started, the German Intelligence or Abwher needed to get agents into Britain, to reinforce and check the viability of the existing networks. What is amazing is that such a bunch of hopelessly prepared and inept agents were used for what was codenamed Operation Lena.

 

 

They arrived by parachute and by dingy from U-boats, each man carrying a suitcase containing a radio transmitter, maps, a handgun and invisible ink. Their mission was to pave the way for the invasion. They seemed hopelessly prepared for their assignments and some even lacked a basic grasp of English or British customs. One hapless individual was arrested when he walked into a pub and tried to order a pint of cider at 10:00, seemingly unaware of licencing regulations. Another pair were stopped while cycling through Scotland on the wrong side of the road and once the police discovered German sausages and Nivea hand cream in their luggage, their cover was blown.

 

Twelve Operation Lena spies were landed in September 1940 and most were captured within forty-eight hours. Some were shot by firing squad in the Tower of London and the rest were turned to provide a stream of false information for the rest of the war. Some were allowed to operate, but heavily monitored to reveal other spies and Nazi sympathisers. A theory proposed by Monika Siedentopf a German author, argues that the botched spying mission was not the result of German incompetence, but a deliberate act of sabotage by a cadre of intelligence officials opposed to Hitler’s plans. This seems rather fanciful given that the Abwher was only too happy to infiltrate and turn SOE networks, particularly in the Netherlands. Hardly the actions of an organisation that wanted Germany to lose the war. It all rather smacks of the Germans trying to re-write history and cover up the German peoples’ monstrous blindness to the depravity of their government. And Germany never cornered the market in espionage ineptitude, as the hapless agents of MI6 proved in Germany prior to the outbreak of war.

 

Blown Periphery - 2018

 

 

[kgwilson]

Good read. The realities of the politics and Nazi sympathisers especially when some were upper echelon Brits was always sanitised when we were told about things back in the 50s & 60s. Loved the nickname for the original home guard Local Defence Volunteers "Look Duck & Vanish". What happened to part 1?

 

 

[kgwilson]

Found part 1. After this really interesting read I read the Berlin Airlift which I'd been planning to read but put off. Thanks again for posting.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

I'm glad that folks agree that the political back stories are as intriguing as the fact that a lot of it seems to have missed the mainstream history books of the period. 'History is written by the winners' being at the forefront I guess, with certain 'BallsUps' quietly ignored by the Allies ( and by the Germans it seems )

 

Here's the Third tranche of the tale. . .

 

Operation Sealion – Part 3

 

 

More Fifth Columnists, Useful Idiots, Traitors and Spies

 

There was much concern not just from an external invasion, but also the activities of some people in Britain and their lack of wholehearted commitment to the fight ahead. Traitors and German agents were seen everywhere and the paranoia rose to a height after the Norwegian campaign and the activities of the quislings. The Tory arch-appeaser, Sir Samuel Hoare known as “Slippery Sam” was a case in point. He was loathed by Churchill, who on coming to power ordered his expulsion from Downing Street circles. “Tell that man if his room is not cleared by two o’ clock I will make him Minister for Iceland.”

 

There was a more obvious candidate for suspicion, close surveillance and incarceration, Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Ancoats. Former Labout MP and Leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Mosley had become more brazen with his attacks of the Government throughout the so-called Phoney War, although this period was anything but phoney for members of Bomber Command and the Royal Navy. His Britain First rally at the Earls Court Exhibition Hall on 16 July 1939 was the biggest indoor political rally in British history.

 

Unbeknown to Mosley the BUF and been comprehensively infiltrated by MI5 and while his ongoing agitation was tolerated, when the Battle of France commenced in May 1940, Mosley was interned on 24th May 1940 under the Emergency Powers Act, 18B. Mosley’s internment was very cosy compared to other internees. He lived in a house in the grounds of Holloway Prison with his wife, where his son Max was born in 1940.

 

The level of tolerance shown by the authorities to potentially dangerous and toxic individuals and organisations seems not unlike the authority’s tolerance of our current, far more dangerous fifth column. The then Home Secretary Sir John Anderson displayed remarkable forbearance and even though the Nazi/Soviet Pact had carved up Poland between the two countries, the British Communist Party was allowed to freely operate. The War Secretary Anthony Eden became exasperated with Anderson and many of his critics felt that the Home Secretary was failing to grasp the realities of War.

 

However, a plot uncovered in London revealed a number of establishment figures, a global network and a plan that could have brought down the President of the United States. At its heart were three figures, Anna Wolkoff, a White Russian who wanted to see the Third Reich triumphant in heading a united Europe. Captain Maule “Jock” Ramsey, a Conservative MP, war veteran and rabid anti-Semite and Tyler Kent, a US Foreign Service clerk with a penchant for the high-life. This gang of three formed part of the Right Club, a network that was virulently anti-Semitic and wanted to overthrow the British War effort. Another key player was Joseph P Kennedy US Ambassador to London, who held a long hatred of Britain and her Empire and made no secret of his admiration of Hitler.

 

Once again MI5 had infiltrated the Right Club and was astonished at just how widespread the network of Nazi sympathisers was and how it riddled British society like cancer. MI5 infiltrated a number of women into the Right Club who posed as extreme right-wing acolytes and they became trusted within the organisation. What caused the authorities to act was Tyler Kent’s passing of sensitive documents to the Soviets and then onto the Nazis. While Kent had diplomatic immunity, on 20th May Special Branch arrested Wolkoff in the Russian Tea Rooms in Kensington. Kent’s flat was searched and a veritable treasure trove of treachery found. Ramsey was also arrested that day and interned while Kent was deported and prosecuted in America.

 

Finally Anderson acted and had Mosley and large number of the BUF arrested along with most of the 73,533 Germans and Austrians who were over sixteen and resident in the UK. Those not interned in camps on the Isle of Man had restrictions placed on their movement and they were not allowed radios, bicycles or maps. Refugees from Nazi Germany had no restrictions placed on them, and many went on to serve in the Special Forces or as specialist radio operators in Bomber Command. They flew as an eighth crew member on 101 Squadron Lancasters and attempted to spoof the German night fighters, by giving false vectors over frequency agile radio sets.

 

 

King Edward VIII and Britain’s Narrow Escape

 

Mainstream British newspapers such as the Daily Mail regularly heaped praise on the Third Reich and published membership forms for Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists so that their readers might have the opportunity to join. And while the majority of the British people were wise enough to have no truck with fascism and the Nazis, there were elements of the British Establishment who thought that Hitler should be either appeased or embraced. Indeed, appeasement was the policy of the British government, firstly under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and then his successor Neville Chamberlain, well-meaning politicians both who simply couldn’t accept that anyone could be as evil and devious as Hitler. Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George visited Hitler in 1936 and was full of praise, considering him the “George Washington of Germany”. Newspaper barons Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere, who were to be instrumental in hushing up King Edward’s affair with Wallis Simpson, were lavishly entertained by Hitler and subsequently praised him in their newspapers.

 

Following his abdication as King Edward VIII the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson settled in France until war broke out and they were brought back to Britain by Mountbatten on board HMS Kelly. The German Ambassador to the Hague clamed in February 1940 that the Duke had leaked plans for the defence of Belgium, a claim that the Duke denied. When the Germans invaded northern France the Duke and Duchess headed south, first to Spain, then to Lisbon where they lived in the home of Ricardo de Espírito Santo, a Portuguese banker with both British and German contacts. The kindest thing I can think to say about the Duke of Windsor is that he had a poor sense of moral judgement.

 

The German Abwehr concocted a plan codenamed Operation Willi to lure the Duke back to Spain where he could be abducted and taken to Germany as a “Leader of Britain in Waiting.” Lord Caldecote wrote a warning to Churchill: “(the Duke) is well-known to be pro-Nazi and he may become a centre of intrigue. Churchill threatened the Duke with a court-martial if he did not return to British soil. In July 1940, Edward was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. The Duke and Duchess left Lisbon on 1 August aboard the American Export Lines steamship Excalibur, which was specially diverted from its usual direct course to New York City so that they could be dropped off at Bermuda on the 9th. They left Bermuda for Nassau on the Canadian steamship Lady Somers on 15 August, arriving two days later.

 

The Duke did not enjoy being governor and referred to the islands as “a third-class British colony”. The British Foreign Office objected when the Duke and Duchess planned to cruise aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate, Axel Wenner-Gren, whom British and American intelligence believed to be a close friend of Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring. The Duke remained in the Bahamas for the rest of the war where he could do as little damage as possible. Sensible British patriots may have breathed a sigh of relief.

 

The Germans had already set up spy networks in Britain prior to the outbreak of war and some of our friends over in the Republic of Ireland were only too keen to support any treachery against the hated Brits. But these networks had been comprehensively infiltrated by MI5, much in the same way as the Right Club. Once the war had started, the German Intelligence or Abwher needed to get agents into Britain, to reinforce and check the viability of the existing networks. What is amazing is that such a bunch of hopelessly prepared and inept agents were used for what was codenamed Operation Lena.

 

 

They arrived by parachute and by dingy from U-boats, each man carrying a suitcase containing a radio transmitter, maps, a handgun and invisible ink. Their mission was to pave the way for the invasion. They seemed hopelessly prepared for their assignments and some even lacked a basic grasp of English or British customs. One hapless individual was arrested when he walked into a pub and tried to order a pint of cider at 10:00, seemingly unaware of licencing regulations. Another pair were stopped while cycling through Scotland on the wrong side of the road and once the police discovered German sausages and Nivea hand cream in their luggage, their cover was blown.

 

Twelve Operation Lena spies were landed in September 1940 and most were captured within forty-eight hours. Some were shot by firing squad in the Tower of London and the rest were turned to provide a stream of false information for the rest of the war. Some were allowed to operate, but heavily monitored to reveal other spies and Nazi sympathisers. A theory proposed by Monika Siedentopf a German author, argues that the botched spying mission was not the result of German incompetence, but a deliberate act of sabotage by a cadre of intelligence officials opposed to Hitler’s plans. This seems rather fanciful given that the Abwher was only too happy to infiltrate and turn SOE networks, particularly in the Netherlands. Hardly the actions of an organisation that wanted Germany to lose the war. It all rather smacks of the Germans trying to re-write history and cover up the German peoples’ monstrous blindness to the depravity of their government. And Germany never cornered the market in espionage ineptitude, as the hapless agents of MI6 proved in Germany prior to the outbreak of war.

 

Blown Periphery - March 2018

 

Going Postal blog.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Five more to go. . . .

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Operation Sealion – Part 4

 

5th April 2018

 

 

The Army and Defence in Depth

 

A number of senior members of the Imperial General Staff thought the likelihood of a German Invasion to be ludicrous. They believed the best strategy was to bolster the crumbling French Army. An additional Brigade of the First Armoured Division was duly sent to France where it lost all of its tanks, infantry carriers, artillery and logistics train. Air Chief Marshall Dowding refused to send any more fighters to France as he was husbanding his forces for defence against the air assault that would have to follow. This made him few friends within the Government and IGS and he was sacked as AOC Fighter Command after the Battle of Britain. The Fighter Command pilots had a valid reason to feel aggrieved that the Army blamed them for their own shortcomings leading up to Dunkirk. Over the nine days of Operation Dynamo, the RAF flew 171 reconnaissance, 651 bombing and 2,739 fighter sorties. Fighter Command claimed 262 enemy aircraft, losing 106 of their own, losses worse than they would experience in the upcoming Battle of Britain. There were recorded instances of RAF personnel, including shot down aircrew being refused entry to the boats out of Dunkirk; a shameful escapade in modern British military history.

 

The defence of Britain was encapsulated in the Julius Caesar Plan that was by now hopelessly static and built around a much larger standing army. General Ironside was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff and on 27th May 1940 was appointed Commander-in-Chief Home Forces. Ironside commanded a force which amounted – on paper – to Fifteen Territorial Infantry Divisions, a single armoured division, fifty-seven home-defence battalions, and the Local Defence Volunteers (later the Home Guard). However, all of these were deficient in training and organisation, as the operational units had already been sent to France. They were also lacking in equipment; the force as a whole had almost no modern artillery or anti-tank guns, and the armoured division had just a small number of light tanks. Intelligence was also hopelessly wide of the mark. Some estimates put the German strength at 44 Divisions with the entire RAF being outnumbered four-to-one.

 

The deficiencies with equipment led to an overall lack of mobility, which coupled with the limited training of the units meant that very few were capable of organised offensive counter-attacks against an invading force. As a result, the only way they could practically be used would be to commit them to static defence; Ironside planned to steadily pull units away from the coast and into a central mobile reserve, but this was not possible until they were trained and equipped for the role. He threw himself into the details of the strategy, laying out plans for the static defence of village strong-points by the Home Guard, patrols of “Ironsides” armoured cars to strengthen the divisions and light artillery mounted on trucks as improvised tank destroyers.

 

 

The GHQ Stop Lines

 

By early July there was a scanty mobile reserve in the form of an understrength 8th RTR. A network of pillboxes, anti-tank ditches and roadblocks were constructed and were known as the “Stop Lines.” The map above shows the main defensive positions with a fortress around the Bath/Chippenham area. Corsham would be the Government’s final redoubt in England if London fell. This major works programme would have taken five years in peacetime. It was completed in two months. What became known as the “Ironside Plan” consisted of the following defence in depth:

 

• A defensive “crust” along the coast, able to fight off small raids, give immediate warning of attack, and delay any landings.
   
   
  
• Home Guard roadblocks at crossroads, valleys, and other choke points, to stop German armoured columns penetrating inland.
   
   
  
• Static fortified stop lines sealing the Midlands and London off from the coast, and dividing the coastal area into defensible sectors
   
   
  
• A central corps-sized reserve to deal with a major breakthrough
   
   
  
• Local mobile columns to deal with local attacks and parachute landings
   
   
  

 

 

 

Disguised pillbox added to a house

 

However, criticism of the “Ironside plan” was soon manifest. On 26 June (only a day after the plan’s approval) at a meeting of the Vice-Chiefs of Staff, Air Marshal Richard Peirse pointed out that many of the RAF’s main operational airfields would be overrun by an invader before reaching the principal GHQ Stop Line. Senior Army commanders complained of the plan: We have become pill-box mad.” There was widespread concern that troops were spending their time constructing defences rather than on the training which they desperately needed.

 

Another critic was Major-General Bernard Montgomery, never known for hiding his light under a bushel, who later wrote that he found himself “in complete disagreement with the general approach to the defence of Britain and refused to apply it.” When Churchill visited Montgomery’s 3rd (Regular) Division on 2 July, he described to the prime minister how his division, which was fully equipped except for transport, could be made into a mobile formation by the requisitioning of municipal buses, able to strike at the enemy beachheads rather than strung out along the coast as ordered.

 

Ironside’s position was also compromised by his relationship with “Boney” Fuller, who was a senior member of the British Union of Fascists. The Ironside Plan was very much of its day, the General making the best use of his limited and static resources. However as the summer of 1940 drew on more formations and transport became available and as importantly more guns and ammunition. Ironside was replaced by General Brooke on 19th July and a new strategy implemented. The coastal crust was to be more strongly defended with anti-tank islands or “hedgehogs,” making use where possible of the stop lines and a large, mobile reserve. Emergency Coastal Batteries were constructed to protect ports and likely landing places. They were fitted with whatever guns were available, which mainly came from naval vessels scrapped since the end of the First World War. These included 6 inch, 5.5 inch, 4.7 inch and 4 inch guns. These had little ammunition, sometimes as few as ten rounds apiece. At Dover, two 14 inch guns known as Winnie and Pooh were employed. There were also a few land based torpedo launching sites.

 

 

The map above shows the dispositions of the Southern Defensive Area’s formations around late summer 1940. It is a snapshot in time as the placement of the defensive units was extremely fluid. The most likely landing areas are strongly defended with Regular units, while the other coastal areas are covered by the Home Guard. The Isle of White and the Solent, Hastings, Folkestone and Dover are particularly well defended.

 

Blown Periphery 2018

 

Going Postal blog.