Intended FJ role in Sealion

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phylo_roadking
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#76

Post by phylo_roadking » 05 Dec 2010, 03:22

Peter, IIRC the parlous state of combat-ready manpower for the FJ in the summer of 1940 was discussed further up the thread; they were back up on strength on paper - but were only "filling files" with volunteers still in their first weeks of training after the terrible combined losses of Norway AND Holland...AND they were short on trained despatchers; every Ju 52 downed or heavily damaged in Holland took out two of those.

However - given that they WERE written into the Sealion plans, first just into the General Reserve then into their Lympne operation, there should somewhere be an "official" manpower figure available...
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#77

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 25 Jan 2011, 07:53

Does the Royal Military Canal was intended for the passageway of small RN ships? That's why the FJ was to land nearest to it.


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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#78

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 25 Jan 2011, 08:15

Div HQ
parachute infantry regiment...3 battalions
parachute infantry regiment...3 battalions
A/L infantry regiment...4 battalions (with MGs, PAK guns and light vehicles)
A/L artillery regiment...24 x 75-mm light guns and 12 x 105-mm light guns
support troops

I am not sure if Folkestone, Hythe, Saltwood and 6 other villages if captured, the local population would be process by 'Zoning' method and then line up on a wall then machine gunned. Historically, what's the total population of these 9 localities in 1940?

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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#79

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Jan 2011, 14:50

Does the Royal Military Canal was intended for the passageway of small RN ships? That's why the FJ was to land nearest to it.
By no means. It was more of a large, waterfilled moat, cutting off the gently sloping beaches and flat land of Romney Marsh from the rising land behind; in the era when the Canal was dug, an invading French army would be able to get ashore on the flat land, establish a bridgehead, develop it in readines for a breakout - all outside the range of cannon - with no obstacle then to effectively prevent them moving inland. The idea was to create such a waterfilled obstacle.

After more forces were landed on the captured airfields, the FJ was to move out again and take the RMC....thus protecting the bridgehead that ideally the Germans would be establishing in the same flat ground. A moat works in two directions... :wink: Like those canals and river lines on the Dunkirk Perimeter, the Canal would the perfect defensive perimter for the Germans in the first few days.
I am not sure if Folkestone, Hythe, Saltwood and 6 other villages if captured
Folkestone wasn't/isn't a "village, its quite a large town; both it and Hythe would most assuredly be bypassed by the FJ - whose orders, remember, take them other places! 8O - because of the "coastal crust" defensive forces in them; they'd get tangled up in a furball with the defenders and be sidetracked from their airfield objectives.

Possibly ditto the villages, each with their party of Home Guard; probably not hard to suppress...but each action would take time
the local population would be process by 'Zoning' method and then line up on a wall then machine gunned.
Ditto this; actions like this take TIME - which, with the crosscountry movements mandated by the FJ's plans, is definitely at a premium...
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#80

Post by nebelwerferXXX » 29 Jan 2011, 04:04

Thanks! phylo_

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Re: 16,000-man Fallschirmjager

#81

Post by Zuylen » 17 Feb 2011, 02:26

Peter H wrote: At most 8,000 Fallschirmjagers deployed at Crete in 1941.Morever this included FJR3 and the Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment both being formed in the summer of 1940.I think you would be lucky to have 6,000 FJs available for Sealion.
Totally correct. The losses in Holland had been around one third of the strength of FJR 1 and half FJR 2, leaving around 3,000 able airbornes. A few hundred more from Ersatz and the remnants in Norway. The total jump school instruction team had been assigned to active units in the april-may 1940 campaign. In the Summer of 1940 a figure of 6.000 able airbornes was probably even too high a number.

The 22.Airborne Division had an operation airlanding strength of around 10.500 heads. That was the so called 'Fliegende Staffel' or 'airlifting strength'. It had been battered in the Netherlands, specifically around the Hague. But these losses were probably made up easily from the reserves that had belonged to the 'Erd Staffel' or 'Earth strength', the major chunk of the division that was left in Germany during the Holland operation. Taking the airborne and airlanding strength together one might assume that around 16.000 men combined forces could have been met in the Summer of 1940.

The Ju 52 losses in May 1940 in Holland were close to 300 planes, of which 225 were 50% or more damaged. Those 300 planes were around onethird of the transport fleet at that time. Losses elsewhere, like Norway, Belgium and France shall have contribued to a slightly higher bill over the Westfeldzug. I am 100% certain that these losses had not been compensated by the end of the Summer, as is stated somewhere down this thread. Only around January 1941 the transport plane losses of the April-June 1940 campaign had been compensated by repairs and newly constructed Ju 52's. More importantly, the losses of skilled airmen had been devastating. Not only had many been killed in Scandinavia and Holland, many had been captured around the Hague - particularly on May 10, 1940 when around the Hague appr. 125 Ju 52 were lost - and shipped to the UK on May 14, 1940. This event, where 1.250 airbornes and Luftwaffe pilots had been shipped to the UK just before the Dutch armistice, got the Reichsmarschall totally nuts. Particularly the fact that the Ju 52 school had been canabalized from its instructors for the Holland flights, made these losses bear terribly heavy on the replacement of personnel too. Most of the Ju-52 personnel had been Lufthansa crew and these men had been thoroughly trained, often used as instructors too. The losses amongst these men had been hard felt. It caused another problem besides the losses of material.

I read somewhere down this thread that the landings of the airbornes in the West had been a tactical success, according to someone's opinion. I beg to differ. That only applied for the Dutch theatre under Rotterdam, where the isolated AFB Waalhaven was successfully taken by III./FJR 1. The operation on three AFB's around the Hague failed utterly, costing th Luftwaffe, 7. Fliegerdivision and 22. ID terrible losses. Some units were practically annihilated. The Norway airborne landings on the airfields were childsplay. The airborne operations in Holland were successful around the bridges in particular. That's were the airbornes proved themselves as a handy assett, as long as the ground forces could move in fast enough. Calling the German airborne ops around the airfields a tactical success is hardly accurate.

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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#82

Post by phylo_roadking » 20 Feb 2011, 18:40

The Ju-52 losses in May 1940 in Holland were close to 300 planes, of which 225 were 50% or more damaged. Those 300 planes were around onethird of the transport fleet at that time. Losses elsewhere, like Norway, Belgium and France shall have contribued to a slightly higher bill over the Westfeldzug.
Losses in Norway to the end of hostilities on June 9th amounted to a further 180Ju 52s 8O
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#83

Post by Urmel » 21 Feb 2011, 21:33

Good point on the topography., and good pictures Many people who think an invasion of Kent would have been a doddle have probably never been there and think it looks like Ukraine.
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#84

Post by Zuylen » 21 Feb 2011, 22:03

phylo_roadking wrote:
The Ju 52 losses in May 1940 in Holland were close to 300 planes, of which 225 were 50% or more damaged. Those 300 planes were around onethird of the transport fleet at that time. Losses elsewhere, like Norway, Belgium and France shall have contribued to a slightly higher bill over the Westfeldzug.
Losses in Norway to the end of hostilities on June 9th amounted to a further 180Ju 52s 8O
I stand corrected. Even more reason to disregard assumptions as if the Luftwaffe had replaced a 500 Ju 52 loss by the Summer of 1940 I'd say!

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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#85

Post by Urmel » 21 Feb 2011, 22:24

When the LW managed to assemble 300-odd Junkers 52 by the end of 41 to support the defense against CRUSADER, that was a major effort, and they had to pull planes from Russia and training units.

Of course, by that stage they had suffered heavy losses again in Crete.
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#86

Post by phylo_roadking » 21 Feb 2011, 22:33

Even more reason to disregard assumptions as if the Luftwaffe had replaced a 500 Ju 52 loss by the Summer of 1940 I'd say!
I have to say I wasn't happy with the assumptions made then on the basis of information recieved; apart from the slow rate of construction of new-build Ju 52s discussed, I have no idea as to the rate of "re-"production of aircraft coming out of the parallel reconstruction line....or even how long it took to begin the reconstructions :wink: MacDonald notes about the wrecks and crashlanded aircraft in Holland being surveyed and either written off or recovered in the period after the fall of Holland, but there is no indication of how long this project actually took...

One thing I've learned however in the meantime was how the LW handled the same situation after the end of hositilities on Crete in 1941 :wink: At Maleme, the crashlanded aircraft there were broken down into major assemblies and stored in the RAF's old "boneyard" there (Maleme was a very rough airfield, with a lot of crackups on takeoff/landing, and thus a large number of wrecks even BEFORE the Luftwaffe were kind enough to crowd the flightline with a lot of bent and busted cr@p! :lol:) Over the coming many months, these wing assemblies and fuselages were taken by barge back across the Med to the Greek mainland. By WWII standards, the major assemblies of multiengined aircraft like Ju 52s were quite large items to be moved, so I assume they were likewise barged back to Germany from Holland a year earlier along the Rhine. Nowarra notes that "damaged" Ju 52s from Holland were back in service in "only a few weeks" - but he makes no mention of how long it took to restore complete rebuilds to service.

Speidel commented for example that "The loss of air transport capacity made itself felt for years afterwards" in relation to the losses in Holland; however long it took to build numbers back up - the losses in Holland resulted in the disbandment of the virtually annihilated z.b.V. 11 and 12 :wink:

There is ONE factor however that might just have sped up the reconstruction of the Transportverband's capacity; on the 23rd of July 1940, the Wiesbaden Agreement saw the Vichy government agreeing to produce aircraft for Germany - including Amiot at Colombes beginning to produce Ju 52s! Does anyone know when the first of these came off the production line?
Last edited by phylo_roadking on 21 Feb 2011, 23:09, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#87

Post by Ironmachine » 21 Feb 2011, 23:06

phylo_roadking wrote:on the 23rd of July 1940, the Wiesbaden Agreement saw the Bichy government agreeing to produce aircraft for Germany - including Amiot at Colombes beginning to produce Ju52s! Does anyone know when the first of these came off the production line?
Junkers aircraft and engines, 1913-1945 by Antony L. Kay states that Amiot delivered the first Ju 52/3m to the Luftwaffe in June of 1942.
This same date is also given here:
This high casualty rate demanded action, and a new production line was laid down at the Amiot factory at Colombes, with arrangements being made with a number of sub-contractors in the Paris area. The first French-assembled aircraft was accepted in June 1942 with 40 more being delivered in the next six months, and 321 in the following year.
http://www.pilotfriend.com/photo_albums ... 20Ju52.htm
Regards.
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#88

Post by phylo_roadking » 21 Feb 2011, 23:12

I-M, thanks for that! They might have helped bring the Transportverband up to strength after Crete....only to fall into the waters of the Med trying to supply Tunisia, or lost in the snow at Stalingrad...

But of no relevance to 1940 :wink:
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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#89

Post by Urmel » 22 Feb 2011, 10:01

Actually, the really interesting bit of info in this link is that in 1941 losses exceeded production by a margin of >10%. So no rebuilding then...
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: Intended FJ role in Sealion

#90

Post by Zuylen » 22 Feb 2011, 12:53

phylo_roadking wrote:
I have to say I wasn't happy with the assumptions made then on the basis of information recieved; apart from the slow rate of construction of new-build Ju 52s discussed, I have no idea as to the rate of "re-"production of aircraft coming out of the parallel reconstruction line....or even how long it took to begin the reconstructions :wink: MacDonald notes about the wrecks and crashlanded aircraft in Holland being surveyed and either written off or recovered in the period after the fall of Holland, but there is no indication of how long this project actually took...
That project took slightly over six months in Holland. All wrecks with >50% damage rate were written off, re-usable parts were stripped off. All <50% damage rate were stripped of the 'beyond repair' parts and prepared for re-manufacture. Fokker aviation in the Netherlands took care of at least 50 off Ju 52 before Januari 1941. It is estimated that around 175-200 Ju 52 from the Dutch theatre were scrapped as well as around 50-75 Ju 52 write offs from reassembly of two or more Ju 52 wreckages. About 100 lightly damaged Ju 52 were repaired in the period until Januari 1941. The easy-to-repair batches were repaired in the Netherlands, the hard-to-repair batches shipped to Germany, usually on barges. Of these ops many photographs exist. This operation was one of the most remarkable in the first occupation Summer in Holland and thanks to still existing stocks of film, many Dutchmen photographed these odd transports. Many German soldiers too btw.

The production of the Ju 52 was extremely slow and low. I believe that it never topped the 5,000 pieces until 1945. Which is extremely low given the losses. Göering had its resources concentrate on strike planes rather than transport planes, particularly when Seelöwe was scrapped late 1940. Since the losses in the strike fleet were very high too the emphasis of the Junkers works were on the Ju 87 and 88 rather than the 52.

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