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POSTAL & COURIER SERVICES BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS ASSOCIATION THE POSTHORN Addition 30 November 2015 Contents Operation Sea Lion/ Seelowe Operation Sea lion/ Seelowe Page 1- 11 Allied-Occupied Germany Page 11- 16 Germany BFPOs then & Now. Page 16 - 18 Cold War Remembered Page 18 - 23 Medal Update Page 23 - 24 Post Notes Annual General Meeting Page 24 - 26 Membership & Committee Page 26 Lost & Found Members Page 26 -27 Subscriptions Page 27 - 29 Booking Form Page 30 Forthcoming Events Annual Dinner & Dance Operation Sea Lion (German: Unternehmen Seelöwe) was Nazi Germany's plan PCS REA Reunion to invade the United Kingdom during the Second World War, following the Fall of 8th – 10th April 2016 France. For any likelihood of success the operation required both air and naval superiority over the English Channel, neither of which the Germans ever achieved during or after the Battle of Britain. Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely on 17 REA Events 2016 September 1940 and never carried out. 28 May Trooping the Colour - Major General’s Review 09 June Royal Hospital Chelsea Background Founder’s Day Parade Adolf Hitler had decided by early November 1939 on forcing an end to the war by 4 June Trooping the Colour – invading France. In order to avoid the heavily-defended Maginot Line the Germans Colonel’s Review 8 - 9 June Beating Retreat, had to invade Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in order to invade London France. With the prospect of the Channel ports falling under Kriegsmarine (the 10 – 12 June Chilwell Weekend* German navy) control, and attempting to anticipate the obvious next step that might 11 June Queen’s Birthday entail, Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) Erich Raeder (head of the Kriegsmarine) Parade instructed his operations officer, Kapitän Hans Jürgen Reinicke, to draw up a 29 – 31 July Minley Weekend* document examining "the possibility of troop landings in England should the future 16 - 18 September Corps progress of the war make the problem arise." Reinicke spent five days on this study Memorial Weekend* and set forth the following prerequisites: Elimination or sealing off of Royal 08 October REA AGM and Navy forces from the landing and approach areas. Annual Dinner * 09 October Sapper Sunday at Royal Hospital Chelsea Elimination of the Royal Air Force (RAF). 10 November Field of Destruction of all Royal Navy units in the coastal zone. Remembrance, Westminster Prevention of British submarine action against the landing fleet. Abbey 13 November Remembrance In December 1939, the German Army issued its own study paper Sunday (designated Nordwest) and solicited opinions and input from both *National Events the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe(the German Air Force). The paper outlined an assault on England's eastern coast between The Wash and the River Thames by troops crossing the North Sea from the Low The POSTHORN November 2015 Newsletter Page | 1 Country ports. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, responded with a single-page letter in which he stated: "...a combined operation having the objective of landing in England must be rejected. It could only be the final act of an already victorious war against Britain as otherwise the preconditions for success of a combined operation would not be met." The Kriegsmarine response was rather more restrained but equally focused on pointing out the many difficulties to be surmounted if invading England was to be a viable option. Later in the spring of 1940 the Kriegsmarine became even more opposed to invading Britain after its Pyrrhic victory in Norway. After Operation Weserübung, as the invasion of Norway had been code-named, the Kriegsmarine had only one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, and four destroyers available for operations. Admiral Raeder was strongly opposed to Sea Lion since almost the entire Kriegsmarine surface fleet had been either sunk or badly damaged in Weserübung, and his service was hopelessly outnumbered by the ships of the Royal Navy. On 16 July 1940, following Germany's swift and successful occupation of France and the Low Countries and growing impatient with Britain's outright rejection of his recent peace overtures, Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 16, setting in motion preparations for a landing in Britain. He prefaced the order by stating: "As England, in spite of her hopeless military situation, still shows no signs of willingness to come to terms, I have decided to prepare, and if necessary to carry out, a landing operation against her. The aim of this operation is to eliminate the English Motherland as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued, and, if necessary, to occupy the country completely." Hitler's directive set four conditions for the invasion to occur: The RAF was to be "beaten down in its morale and in fact, that it can no longer display any appreciable aggressive force in opposition to the German crossing". The English Channel was to be swept of British mines at the crossing points, and the Strait of Dover must be blocked at both ends by German mines. The coastal zone between occupied France and England must be dominated by heavy artillery. The Royal Navy must be sufficiently engaged in the North Sea and the Mediterranean so that it could not intervene in the crossing. British home squadrons must be damaged or destroyed by air and torpedo attacks. This ultimately placed responsibility for Sea Lion 's success squarely on the shoulders of Raeder and Göring, neither of whom had the slightest enthusiasm for the venture and, in fact, did little to hide their opposition to it. Nor did Directive 16 provide for a combined operational headquarters under which all three service branches (Army, Navy, Air Force) could work together under a single umbrella organisation to plan, coordinate and execute such a complex undertaking (similar to the Allies' creation of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) for the later Normandy landings). Upon hearing of Hitler's intentions, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, through his Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, quickly offered up to ten divisions and thirty squadrons of Italian aircraft for the proposed invasion. Hitler initially declined any such aid but eventually allowed a small contingent of Italian fighters and bombers, the Italian Air Corps (Corpo Aereo Italiano or CAI), to assist in the Luftwaffe's aerial campaign over Britain in October/November 1940.] German land forces In the plan finalised in August 1940, the invasion force was organised into two army groups drawn from the 6th Army, the 9th Army and the 16th Army. The first wave of the landing would have consisted of eleven infantry and mountain divisions, the second wave of eight panzer and motorised infantry divisions and finally, the third wave was formed of six further infantry divisions. The initial assault would have also included two airborne divisions and the special forces of the Brandenburg Regiment.[13] Air power Battle of Britain Beginning in August 1940, the German Luftwaffe began a series of concentrated aerial attacks (designated Unternehmen Adlerangriff or Operation Eagle Attack) on targets throughout the United Kingdom in an attempt to destroy the RAF and establish air superiority over Great Britain. The campaign later became known as the Battle of Britain. The change in emphasis of the bombing from RAF bases to bombing London, however, turned Adlerangriff into a strategic bombing operation. The effect of the switch in strategy is disputed. Some historians argue that the change in strategy lost the Luftwaffe the opportunity of winning the air battle, or air superiority. Others argue the Luftwaffe achieved little in the air battle and the RAF was not on the verge of collapse, as often claimed. Another perspective has also been put forward, which suggests the Germans could not have gained air superiority before the weather window closed. Others have pointed out that it was unlikely the Luftwaffe would ever be able to destroy RAF Fighter Command. If British losses became severe, the RAF could simply have withdrawn northward and regrouped. It could then deploy when, or if, the Germans launched an invasion. Most historians argue Sea Lion would have failed regardless, because of the weaknesses of German sea power compared to the Royal Navy. The view of those who believed, regardless of a potential German victory in the air battle, that Sea Lion was still not going to succeed included a number of German General Staff members. Admiral Karl Dönitz believed air superiority was "not enough". Dönitz stated, "we possessed neither control of the air or the sea; nor were we in any position to gain it". Erich Raeder, commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine in 1940 argued: The POSTHORN November 2015 Newsletter Page | 2 .....the emphatic reminder that up until now the British had never thrown the full power of their fleet into action. However, a German invasion of England would be a matter of life and death for the British, and they would unhesitatingly commit their naval forces, to the last ship and the last man, into an all-out fight for survival. Our Air Force could not be counted on to guard our transports from the British Fleets, because their operations would depend on the weather, if for no other reason. It could not be expected that even for a brief period our Air Force could make up for our lack of naval supremacy. When Franz Halder, the Chief of the Army General Staff, heard of the state of the Kriegsmarine, and its plan for the invasion, he noted in his diary, on 28 July 1940, "If that [the plan] is true, all previous statements by the navy were so much rubbish and we can throw away the whole plan of invasion". Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations in the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht), remarked, after Raeder said the Kriegsmarine could not meet the operational requirements of the Army, "then a landing in England must be regarded as a sheer act of desperation".