Seriously though, has anyone actually seen the CW conquered in WIF?
I too have had the indignity of losing England in a Sea Lion. It was not a case of inexperience or inattentiveness, either. Here is how it happened.
The Germans/IT built TRS, AMPH, NAV, and ships (including finishing the Graf Zep right away, so I knew that I would be facing a sea lion. However, I prepared to defend Spain from the start by having CW DOW Portugal and then starting to unload corps into Portugal right around the fall of France in late summer 1940. Italy began building up an offensive force in Libya to after Egypt. By early 1941 Japan was moving into position to attack India and Australia. This caused me to rush more corps to the Asia/Pacific theater, nearly emptying England of ground corps in early 1941.
By early 1941 it was becoming evident that the GE/IT were not going after Spain, but rather were preparing to invade England. I was able to move some of my corps in Egypt and most of the corps in Portugal back to England but this was with some difficulty as the Axis had taken control of Biscay with strong NAV and Fighters in the two box. The BoA was not going well, either. I had lost quite a few CP and was running out of spare convoys by mid '41. The CW navy was spread thin by JP aggressive move on India and australia in early '41 as well.
The surprise move came in MA41 when the Axis DOWed Ireland and landed easily on the surprise impulse. They were then able to walk into Belfast the following turn, land a few NAV on rebase into Belfast and threaten to cut off CWs only convoy link to the empire in the Faeroes. This forced the CW to move precious fighters to cover the 0 box, Faeroes gap.
In MJ the Germans took an air and few ground strikes against just about every ground unit south of Manchester. Alexander was flipped as well as most every other land corps. The invasion hit Harwich and and the hex just north with bouth amphibious invasion and paradrops. Both hexes had just notional defenders and they were covered with CAP so that I couldn't fly ground support. I think both invasions combats were +14 (2D10), and both attacking stacks landed without flipping. The remaining CW Fighters were in the North Sea desperately trying to find the Axis AMPH and TRS in the 3 box (which didn't have air cover). No luck with that.
Because most of the CW ground units were flipped, as well as Alexander (Gort was in Scotland) I could not attack the landing hexes with anything close to a decent attack. In addition to trying to wall of the Axis occupied hexes west of London, I had to defend against the MAR which was threatening the Liverpool area from Ireland. Finally, I had to bring the corps down from Scotland and fall back to the Manchester-Birmingham line. London was still held, but he was ignoring it.
In SO41, after making progress against central England the Axis sprung another invasion up in depleted Scotland. This was the coup de grace. USE was so bad that even after England was invaded the US didn't gear up until JA41., although part of that was due to my mismanagement of tension. Because the Axis were able to establish such a firm stranglehold on England/Scotland/Ireland by SO41, they were able to begin shifting MECH and ARM corps to the east to face down the Russians. USSR would have to attack in 1942, but by the time the good weather approached, England was finished and the bulk of the German army was already heading east. The Axis had something like 8 good NAV and about an equal number of fighters that could reach the 2 box that were able to completely dominate Biscay and Faeroes. This meant that even when the US was able to DOW sometime in 1942, they would not be able to approach the contient except through Spain. India was inundated with JP corp and Australia had been conquered. Game over.
But it was a great learning experience!
Cheers
John
