Salute

Actually, while the Battle of Britain, which was an aerial engagement, was won by the RAF, the existence of the British Navy was at least as important to the fact the Germans could not invade as the presence of the RAF in the skies.

Because the Royal Navy outnumbered and dominated the German navy so thoroughly, in order to have a successful invasion, the Germans needed COMPLETE Air Superiority. The British merely needed a contested air space for their Navy to be able to operate, albeit with considerable loss, against an invasion.

For example, while the Germans had an overall air superiority during the Dunkirk evacuation, the RAF was able to contest control enough so that the Royal Navy could come in and evacuate the BEF. Losses were heavy in ships, but the job was done.

If the Germans had launched their invasion in September 1940, they would not have been able to prevent the Royal Navy from entering the Channel and sinking the majority of the German transports and supporting Naval elements. The losses to the Royal Navy would be high, but considering the alternative was the overrunning of the British homeland, it would be acceptable.

The Royal Navy never participated except in a peripheral way in the Battle of Britain, but when Hitler, the Werhmacht, the Kriegsmarine, and the Luftwaffe, planned their operations, it was the shadow in the corner of the room, the proverbial 1000 lb Gorilla.

Interesting read and well researched:

http://fishponds.org.uk/luftbri1.html

Scroll down, http://www.naval-history.net/WW2RN04-194004.htm

RN destroyer losses: 6 out of 40 (3 from torpedos)

If anyone living in the States subscribes to the online Blockbuster postal thingy, they have both Piece of Cake and the very moving documentary Finest Hour available. Just watched both of these again, the latter causing a couple of eye moisteners.

S! Comp

Greetings,

So long since I've been on here I had to create a new user!

Anyway, I'd certainly add 'The Hardest Day' by Alfred Price to the list. Excellent work on the frantic action of the 18th August 1940.

The low-level attack by KG76 on Kenley was the subject of one of the instant action scenarios in the original BoB.

S!

I thought a more substantial reason why Hitler didn't invade Britain was that he never expected Britain to keep fighting, and never made any serious preparations to invade?

Weather and time of year was also a major factor, not to mention Hermann Goering kept promising Hitler that the Luftwaffe could defeat Britain without the need for German troops on english soil.

Not withstanding the other factors like the Germans being overstretched on virtually every continent...

From a certain point of view, all history is revisionist history.

***

Even if the Germans could have achieved air supremacy, they wouldn't have had an easy go of an invasion. The Royal Navy would almost certainly have been tossed into the mix regardless; not only that, but the Germans had virtually no knowledge of how to conduct an amphibious invasion of a contested coastline (in fact, no nation had proper knowledge at the time). The equipment that was planned to be used consisted mainly of river barges, which would have required an almost unheard-of dead calm in the Channel in order to work without swamping, or so this one has been told. If any beachhead was to be secured, it would have to have been done via a combined naval-borne and airborne assault, using those massive Me 321 and Me 323 transports as well as the venerable old Ju 52, all of which would have had to brave a well-established network of flak and beach obstacles.

In short, the RAF was only the most visible of a large number of obstacles in Germany's way in 1940, the British having had almost a full year to prepare to resist a seaborne invasion. While Britain had nothing to approach the intricate fortifications of the Atlantic Wall, they had well enough preparations to make Jerry's day really unhappy. Of course, we can say this now, but this one imagines that the attitude was somewhat different in those days, and perhaps that could be one reason why the victory of the RAF is celebrated so much more then other factors in the campaign, such as how vital the Observer Corps was in supplementing the radar installations.

Dornier Do-17/215 and some Do-217 super site

Don't forget the Wiki's. They are at least as good as the general books out there.