The force comparison centres on Rodney, Valiant, Renown, Repulse, cruisers, and 34 Allied destroyers against Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, seven cruisers, and 14 destroyers. The German ships are burdened with troops and equipment, while the British force includes Tribal-class destroyers designed to defeat enemy destroyers. The repeated simulations test the counterfactual; they do not make battle outcomes automatic. Programming German torpedoes with their poor historical reliability removes what otherwise looks like the invasion force's best equaliser. Renown and Repulse can pursue the German battlecruisers while Warspite closes from another direction, and the runs usually end with the loss of at least one of Scharnhorst or Gneisenau. Glorious survives because those ships are no longer free to repeat their historical interception.
Chapter · 24:04-30:18
How the Home Fleet could break the invasion force
The proposed divergence is a Home Fleet interception of forces heading for Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik, where heavily laden German ships cannot escape British capital ships and destroyers.