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By Root 1135 0

preliminary planning for the invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion, while the Battle of France was still in progress. This presented the Germans with problems they had not previously considered; there was no tradition of amphibious warfare in German history. The Wehrmacht was a land animal; it could do a river crossing, but the Channel was not quite a river. The navy was not much help; it had no tradition of amphibious warfare either. The German Navy grew up out of a branch of the Coast Artillery, fathered by the vaulting ambition of Admiral von Tirpitz. Except for Norway, it had never landed on a hostile shore, and the British were not likely to be gulled the way the Norwegians had been. Could you use canal barges to cross the Channel? did you have to have a seaport or could you go over open beaches? how much backup shipping would you need for logistics? No one was sure, but being German, the Germans began working, and the plan began to take shape. The Dutch and French Channel ports began to fill with barges and tugs; the troops began to practice clambering in and out of them. The army needed time to reorganize from its sweeping victory over France; the navy was still in bad shape from the beating it took in the Norwegian campaign. But slowly, things began to fall into shape.

The urgency was less theirs than the Luftwaffe’s, anyway. For the Germans to invade, the navy must dominate the Channel. But before it could do that the Luftwaffe must dominate the air over the Channel. By now, after Norway, both the British and the Germans recognized it would be naval suicide to take their big ships into the narrow waters under enemy air control. So it was up to the Luftwaffe; it must gain control of the airspace over northwest France and the Low Countries, the Channel, and southeastern England. In yet another of their legendary feats of organization, the Germans were getting set by the end of June. The units of the ever-victorious Luftwaffe moved into the Channel airfields of France, Belgium, and Holland. Though the newest of the Germans armed services, they considered themselves the elite; they were also particularly the “Nazi” service, built by Hitler, commanded by his old friend and close supporter, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. They believed in what they were doing. Unlike the “decadent” British, they marched out to their planes in the morning, singing. At least for a while.

They would be hampered in the coming battle by the inadequacy of their equipment. In the Messerschmitt Bf109e they had one of the world’s great fighter aircraft; it was marginally better than the most plentiful British fighter, the Hurricane. Unfortunately, it was marginally inferior to the newer Spitfire. The Germans had a twin-engine long-range fighter, the ME110; it would prove disastrous. Their bombers, the Heinkel and the Dornier, were already obsolescent and would lack range, carrying capacity, and defensive armament. In the mid-thirties, the Germans had made their choice; they had gone for tactical aircraft and medium bombers. Now, with a strategic objective in view, they were about to overreach themselves.

This was not known at the time. Neither the British nor the Germans knew what was going to happen. No one even knew what it would take to achieve the kind of conditions desired. If the Germans overestimated their strength, the British underestimated their residual resources. They were hopelessly weak on the ground, and the army would stand little chance against the Germans if it came to that. But the air force was still intact. Most of the Advanced Air Striking Force had gone down the drain in France, and there had been a steady bleeding of squadrons from Britain into the fighting over Dunkirk and northern France. But they reached a point where the Air Staff had put its foot down: if any more squadrons were sent to the aid of France, they would not be responsible for the safety of Britain. It was embarrassing for Churchill to tell Reynaud, but it had the effect of preserving the fifty-nine squadrons of the Metropolitan Air Force for home