T. A. Gardner wrote: ↑25 Sep 2019, 00:21
Actually, thinking about this some more, an alternate plan the Germans could have easily implemented to defeat Britain would be:
First, the actual invasion of Britain isn't planned for. That is, the Germans recognize they probably can't pull it off so they don't waste a lot of time and effort on trying to pull it off.
Instead, they focus on a strategy of strangling Britain by sinking their merchant fleet. This time it isn't a half-@$$ed effort by the Luftwaffe and just U-boats with the occasional traditional surface raider. Instead, they plan a mass commerce war at sea, and once France falls, a full and massive effort to crush Britain in the Middle East while holding off on attacking Russia until Britain goes under.
The changes would involve the Luftwaffe putting more effort into developing long ranged maritime aircraft. They don't need huge numbers of these, 100 at most in operational service would suffice. That's a far cry from the dozen FW 200 that were improvised into this role in 1940. Pick the type, it really doesn't matter early on so long as it can range out into the Atlantic and has the ability to bomb / torpedo / attack and sink a merchant ship.
Next, the Luftwaffe develops a torpedo and torpedo bomber (this could be their extant bombers carrying a torpedo) by 1939. This is quite doable.
Pilots are given at least some training on attacking ships and thought is put into how to best do this.
The KM in addition to traditional merchant raiders, converts a number of merchant ships into small aircraft carriers. This consists of razing the superstructure of the ships picked and plopping a hanger and flight deck with arresting gear and maybe a catapult or two somewhere such that rolling takeoffs can still be done. The complement of aircraft is 8 to 12 operational planes with some of either the He 112 fighter (navalized), the Ju 87, and or Fi 167 aboard along with say another 6 to 8 disassembled spares that can be put together as needed for replacements. The cargo holds are converted to magazines and to carry avgas. Plop say 4 15cm guns and some light AA here and there aboard and you're all set.
Training the pilots could be done on a land based mock up of the flight deck. The planes would still be Luftwaffe to appease Göring.
You pair one of these with a conventional raider or even a warship at sea at the beginning of the war where they're already deployed to begin operations.
This greatly enhances the capacity of the surface raiders. They have the ability to scout far more ocean, attack ships at greater distances, and put a huge strain on the British to protect their merchants from air attack.
Given that in the first year or so of the war almost all British merchants would be unarmed, these planes would give the Germans a means to cripple and sink far more shipping over a wider area of ocean. The planes also make it far easier for the raiders to evade British surface warships looking for them.
Imagine for example one of these improvised carriers being with Graf Spee. The carrier's planes could have found the British cruisers far enough away to allow the Germans to evade detection. Worse for the British the planes might attack their cruisers damaging them.
The carrier doesn't even necessarily have to keep up with the Graf Spee much of the time. It just needs to be close enough to operate it's planes over the ship.
The Luftwaffe also cooperates more with the KM in attacking shipping. For Göring, this lets his service play an important role in defeating Britain.
It doesn't require much in the way of new equipment, nor does it detract from existing systems and controls. For the British, it creates a quandary though. Since Germany pursues a Balkans / North Africa campaign scheme from the start and puts the effort put into Seelöwe into sustaining an army in North Africa instead, the British have to continue to field a large army. The Luftwaffe can pursue both missions at the same time as they are putting only a token effort into attacks on Britain itself and often these attacks are against shipping in ports.
The FAA remains largely impotent for the most part in the early years of the war due to poor equipment and simply lack of production. The RAF's short-ranged fighters are mostly worthless against a commerce war at sea, but have to remain in service in case Germany changes strategies.
If we say Britain loses 20 to 30% more shipping per year from 1939, that would definitely have put the hurt on Britain by 1941.