Favorite Books

There are a select few books that are in my library the I do not want to live without and yesterday in a used book shop in York PA I found this, a copy of Peter Fleming's Operation Sea Lion. My original purchase of this is what got me to start my studies of this what-if campaign. The connection to James Bond and that this was a book written before the release of the British knowledge from signal intelligence only came latter. I was young.

My initial copy was found in a used book shop in Ferndale California back in 1986. My new copy was bought for the sole purpose of it having an intact book jacket. Yes I do love this book that much.

Do you have similar books you love?

Building the Village

For any gamer we need our home field to defend, for some it is our home county, town or village. For me it is a non-descript English/Cornish village that can be used for both Operation SeaLion and a VBCW campaign (have not given up on that yet).

Image from Tiger Terrain

With receiving this weeks test order from Tiger Terrain. I ordered the stone barn and farm house and was very pleased. I also picked up the outbuildings to give the village a rustic feel. While still unpainted I am please on three levels. They were delivered in a timely manner of less than two weeks. Coming from the UK, that is great. Customer service was top notch with me receiving emails through each step. Lastly is the quality. I am very impressed with the quality of the resign castings. These buildings have great detail and I look forward to painting them. The company even sent me painting instructions. Well done Stephan.

Village is coming together

As of this evening the village has a manor house, a vicarage, a small shop and a post office and telephone exchange. Add to this three farm building and five houses we have an exciting village coming together.

Home Guard Platoon

After way to long, I have finished off this platoon, being a project almost three years in the making based on other blog posts and receipts I have found in my books dealing with Operation Sea Lion.

For some background, when I started I was looking at Mick Yarrow's 15mm line. They looked good against some of the Flames of War figures I was contemplating and I purchased a platoon. Does anyone know why Flames of War never got around to designing a Home Guard line of miniatures? As I worked on these healthy looking figures,  I found that I really wanted to stay with Peter Pig so that I why I have a company with two platoons, one of big healthy farmers and a second of towns folks of slightly svelter proportions. These will be used with either IABSM or Chain of Command.

So without any further delay here is my latest platoon.

HQ Team

First Section

Second Section

Third Section

Two additional patrols or a single section with two many Officers and NCOs

If War Should Come

I will often buy a book for a project, the project gets side tracked and the book ends up on the shelf or in one of my banker storage boxes in the down stairs closet waiting for it to be pulled off and put to use. This one of those books. Bought when I was working on a Sea Lion Project 2015 it was put on the shelf with other 1940's Sea Lion books and at the end of last year I was determined to get some Chain of Command gaming using newly purchased but not painted figures. Well this month I finished off painting the Mick Yarrow figures, very healthy for 15mm and a platoon plus of Peter Pig figures. I do have to remind myself not to stray to far from Peter Pig. So I was ready for some reading.

But about this book, it says on the tin that it covers the last years of peace and that is not completely correct. It looks at the defenses of the South Coast going back to Napoleon and The Great War. While the detail on this is light, he has offered sources that will easily add a dozen books to my library on The Great War and Sea Lion that I do not own as of today.

The author goes into detail about war preparation dealing with gas attacks, air raids and food. He also shows how overwhelmed local government were when they were tasked with setting up shelters, food distribution and firefighting services. It is easy today in 2017 to forget that a village or town may not had any fire fighting equipment in 1938.

The plans that he looks at were often designed in 1917 and barely dusted off. There was always the expectation that the next war would not occur without a decades amount of warning. Instead of 10 years the British had only from Oct 1938 to Sep 1939 to complete the preparations, which were often not even started yet.

Lastly he goes into a great deal of detail of how the British primary plans were always to just "muddle through".  It is uncertain if government agencies just thought war was never going to happen, or if if they thought is was someone else's job to start and finish the projects. That changed with Munich. It was for the best, that plans were given some time to complete before September 1939 and even into the winter of the Phony War. Without that time there would not have been either Chain Home Radar Stations or the Hurricane and Spitfire. Just think of the Battle of Britain with the Hawker Hart and the Gloucester Gladiator.

As for a recommendation, I give this book five stars if you are interested in Sea Lion or inter-war military history. As it covers no battles and ends with the start of the war, it has very little action other than buearacratic and great great what-ifs. Enjoy.

Early Morning Village

Here are a couple of pictures of my English village in progress.

 I took these this morning with the only light in the basement being the plant light, looking to simulate dawn. I need to work on some of the MDF buildings and the roads, but in general I am pleased how well it is coming out. Waiting on additional walls from Gaming Models, first time trying Craig's terrain. I also have a couple dozen trees to add to the village. Also waiting on the new releases by Sarissa Precision. A great time to be working on the village at this time.

Lastly I have move wheat fields that I can add to the mix. I might be getting close to going for a 8 by 6 table but that may be getting ahead of myself. 

Holding Action - Sealion

In the third game the LDV were attempting to slow a German advance. After some minor shooting and a few causalities (4 German and 2 British) the brave volunteers attempted to launch an anti-tank attack with a Molotov cocktail.  The die roll says it all.

The British pull back and leave the battlefield to the Germans. For those playing at home that is 3 - nil to the Germans. Next up a change of scenery.

Mystery Writers at War

Many of the mysteries written in the late 1930s and into 1940 took the approaching conflict in Europe and China as a backdrop. What is interesting for me as the historian is how close many of their suppositions were correct. Well at least some of them.

Agatha Christie in N or M and Margery Allingham both write about the fears that were prevalent in England in 1940. Both talk of the concerns of Germans landings (some dressed as nuns), 5th Column activates and a general feeling of fear. France had fallen, the army lacked arms and there were no easy solutions. All took time and that appeared to be in short supply.

In these stories, as in the reality of 1940, the British saw it as their duty for each individual to do their part. While not everyone can be an Albert Campion or Tommy and Tuppence, there were the Peter Fleming and George Orwell.

The stories give a good feel for the period. A time when no one knew if America would be entering the war or if Germany was going to cross the channel. When most people were not aware of what Peter Fleming was up to or the fellows in Bletchley Park.

Taking the LDV Out for the Weekend

This past weekend I took Chain of Command (CoC) out for a spin using my 1940 early LDV (Home Guard) for a little Sea Lion fun. And I wish it was fun for the British. This game was mostly to let me re-remember the rules before taking it to the club in general and Mark in particular. So while I was learning some of the rules again I was finding the LDV a difficult force to command.

In the first game, the LDV barley lasted past the pre-game patrol phase with the Germans quickly splitting the British and called the game. The issue was the British had little depth and were quickly going to lose not one but two Jump Off points. There are no pictures of the first game.

In the second the German Platoon with two tanks were going to try to spit the British again. A fire fight occurred by the German Jump Off Point at the church and the Germans took significant causalities. And than the German Oberleutnant showed up. He organized the Panzer I to support the second section and the two MG34 teams were in support. The significant firepower on the center farm house and the infantry went in and cleaned it out. After breaking the center of the British line the Germans turned right and headed for the second farm house when I remembered I had enough Command Dice saved up to end the turn. That forced the British section to rout with both the British Senior Leader and Junior Leader in tow causing the British moral to collapse.

Will have to rethink how to effectively use the LDV. At a minimum forces with only a couple of Lewis guns for support have to stay closer. Limited support will force them to concentrate firepower and the limited leadership. Looking forward to the next game.

The Battlefield

British Command on the run.

Causalities were heavy to both sides.

Germans advancing on the next farm...

...and than I remembered.

British trying to get around the Germans but ran out of time.
Would hate to see them meet up with two MG34.

Overview by the church.

Sea Lion Books Part 1

Wanted to share with you my reading list for this project. It will grow as there are a number of titles I am reading grow.

Read

• Operation Sea Lion by Peter Fleming 1957
• Invasion: The German Invasion of England, July 1940 by Kenneth Macksey 1980
• Sea Lion by Richard Cox 1977
• More to come…

Reading

• Hitler's Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 by Henrik Lunde 2009
• Hitler's Armada: The Royal Navy and the Defence of Great Britain, April - October 1940 by Geoff Hewitt 2008
• The Home Guard: A Military And Political History S.P. Mackenzie 1995

On the reading list to get

• Ultra goes to war by Ronald Lewin 1978
• The Ultra Secret by F. W. Winterbotham 1975

On order

• When Britain Saved the West: The Story of 1940 by Robin Prior 2015
• If War Should Come: Defence Preparations on the South Coast, 1935-1939 by Philip MacDougall 2013

 As the list grows I will move it over to its own page. Any suggestions are welcome.

Sea Lion as Cover Art

I have always been intrigued with cover art. I have been known to purchase a second copy of an Agatha Christie mystery just based on the cover art. Those of the 1960s and 70s had a very distinct look and feel to them compared to the earlier works for the 30s and 40s. . While at the Navy Exchange I was known to buy a sci-fi or alt-history novel based on the cover art, with mixed results. Now that I am adding to my early World War II library, I am intrigued by the cover art and dust jackets of the books I am buying come from the 1940s to the present. Much of my Sea Lion collection is fiction with appropriate art.

My most recent purchase for this project is Sea Lion by Richard Cox. This novelizes The Staff College wargame that was fought by real 1940 Sea Lion participants in 1974. It is an enjoyable read and has well though combat examples. Well worth a read by anyone interested in World War II in general or Operation Sea Lion in particular.

What I find most distressing is the fictional artwork on the cover. It is not the shallow eyes of the soldier, or the Ju-87 bombing the building (a church?) but it is the little tank in the lower left corner. To me it looks like a Soviet T-34. My assumption is that the artist was told to draw a tank and the T-34 was what was in his sketchbook. Does this make the book less valuable, no, but it makes the arguments about the History Channel getting video wrong just the most recent errors that I have caught. Oh bother.

For now back to the landing beaches. Cannot wait to find out what is going happen,

The Home Guard

Part of my thesis dealing with the historiography of Operation Sea Lion is how the British dealt with the prospects of invasion at different time. And while the German Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) was not prepared to invade Britain right after Dunkirk and the capture of the channel; the British forces were not ready to repel any Axis forces that landed on their shores.

The LDV while started to organize after Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden radio speech on 14th of May, by early July most units were limited in the number of official weapons distributed to the units with most still relying on personal and museum pieces.

So while a 4th of July invasion sounds good in a novel (more on that latter) both the Germans and British will have to wait until September or October before their forces are ready.

And yet Admiral Raeder conceived a possible landing as early as the late fall of 1939...

Right now I am reading Mackenzie's The Home Guard and enjoying it immensely. It is an ex-library copy and the amusing thing is that it came from the Cornwall County Council Library system, the same location as my proposed miniature campaign. The other is Hitler's Armada by Hewitt. This is covering in some detail how the two navies stack up in a possible Operation Sea Lion. Well worth looking at if interested in naval affairs or Sea Lion.

Home Guard Getting Ready

For Father’s Day while the ladies were out so I finished the rest of the British LDV/Home Guard platoon. These will be based in Cornwall looking to take the fight to the German invaders. The force has three sections, a piece of captured Ottoman artillery, and a few Lewis and anti-tank teams.

The village is also a work in progress. I repainted the roads a lighter color and I need to wash and dry brush them. Will be adding a few more buildings and a cemetery for the church in time. Will also be adding an estate house for some of the VBCW battles as well. I do love the 1936-40 period.

A captured Ottoman artillery piece with crew and transport.

We even have a horse unit.

Dad's Army in Quiet Cornwall

Our local squire was very pleased with himself as a new batch of recruits have been outfitted and accepted into the LDV. This allows our small village to report a full platoon ready for action, more or less.

Up until this week our village and the surrounding farms only could muster two complete sections. As this was not enough to count as a platoon the squire changed the records a little that were sent up the chain of command and reported to the district office a platoon with three under strength sections. This technicality allows him to maintain the platoon and his Lieutenant’s pips. If he has his way, the other two nearby villages will bring in another platoon and he can be made a Captain. Although we in the LDV think he is aiming higher. Much higher.

Not sure how London feels about it, but he tells everyone he has brought in support for the unit. I am not sure a captured Ottoman howitzer that stood in the village square and a couple of farming trucks count as support but he is happy.

So begins the LDV here in Cornwall…

While not quite Dad’s Army, the LDV and latter the Home Guard here in sunny Cornwall has little to fear, other than the squire and his business associates. As I am building up this force for Chain of Command I ended up doing this a little backwards.

Normally a gamer will choose a unit or period and start building it and as he or she is doing this they will also conduct research. I started on this ass-backwards (remember war is heck). I was researching Operation Sea Lion academically and found I had a hankering to build a platoon to fight my 1940 Germans.

The academic question seemed simple. How was history, popular or academic, written differently before and after the release that the Allies were reading the German codes.

This requires reading a lot of books and viewing movies and seeing how the war was displayed. And I am OK with that.

The year 1974 is when much of the official disclosures about the code breaking were done in the United Kingdom. A few spotty references can be found in popular works, but for now I will stick with 1974 as the pivot date.

Is this important, for Sea Lion it is very important. We have gone from looking at the plucky British standing up to Hitler with little more than a band of under-equipped volunteers, a few soldiers from Dunkirk and some Spitfires to the understanding (misunderstanding) that the Germans could never launch a successful invasion of Britain. Am I over simplifying, yep but so do the individuals that only see history from the perspective of 2015 and not 1955. Oh bother.