The funny thing about all this is that decades ago when we first discussed these topics, no one ever took the British home guard seriously and thought they would not have had any real chance against some of the best German units and field commanders. Saying otherwise is just fantasizing. It takes years to build up a competent unit. I guess historical perspective blurs with time. My parents who were in Britain at the time, believed their soldiers would have fought well, but were never a real match for the Germans. They never really believed either the RAF or the RN would be able to stop the Germans and these facts are borne out by closer examination.
These discussions always evolve around opinions and POV. Each side will always see their chances better than they actually were, which is why statistics are needed to remove personnel bias from the equation. The RAF averaged only 1 enemy vessel sunk for every 150 sortie through out the whole war and the RAF demonstrated during the summer of 1940, they were unable to prevent German attacks on RN/Convoy/Port targets, which closed down Dover force the RN to flee. German Stuka and JU-88 slant bombers demonstrated a remarkable ability to damage RN vessels by near misses that historically put many warships out of operation for weeks at a time. If the tempo of battle was steady these losses could be mitigated against, but ‘if push came to shove’ the percentage of RN warships out of commission quickly spiraled out of control. One need only read Peter Smiths work on the Narrow Sea to understand the impact and dangerous potential of this.
As I already mentioned before, for the entire war, on average each attacking naval vessels sank on average 1 enemy vessel per sortie . Generalizing from specific events doesn’t work, it must be done the other way around . After reading a number of O’Hara’s studies on surface combat several things are striking. It takes hundreds to thousands of shells to sink a vessel in real war. Often the opening action of any naval clash determines its outcome. Spotting the enemy is the single most important tactical advantage. Combat at night without radar is a real gamble, no matter how good the Intel and the forces you have. But most importantly, the out come of most naval battles is determined by command ability. A force can be out number and out gunned many to one and still prevail in battle. It really striking how impotent most naval vessels and attacks were and how shocked each side was at its own losses.
Having said this an impartial examination of naval forces available is striking. In Jan 1940 the RN could count on about 1250-1300 vessels including allied warships, while the Germans had amassed ~580 vessel. So the RN out numbered the Germans 2:1. This advantage is somewhat watered down since the RN was forced to divert significant portion of its fleet to convoy duties, however the gun power of the fleet in general made up for this short fall.
The Germans had enough mines to link up multiple minefields into a barrier. These historically inflicted 1/3 kills on penetrating vessels, when backed up by coastal artillery and Stuka patrols. They had enough mines for what they planned. Had the German magnetic mines been stockpiled instead of used through out 1940, about 5000 would have been available. Historically through out the war German mines sank one enemy vessel for every 250 mines deployed. This figure was reduced to 1/10th if the mines were magnetic [initially]. These figure would be further reduced to 1/6th, if the mining was done on enemy ports. Combined that could add up to over 300 vessels sunk to mines , statistically speaking.
Each German division would land with weeks of ammo and supplies and were far better at improvising than the ‘green’ British troops would have been. The average travel distance was 40-50miles and the average barge fleet speed was about 3-4 knots timed to ride the currents…meaning average crossing times would be 12-16 hours. Each first wave also included tanks Nebelwerfer and 105mm Howitzer and 150mm infantry guns. Follow on second wave included the rest of the divisional artillery and Korps troops etc.
Peter Schenk has confirmed these facts and stated that by the middle of Sept 1940, the Germans had assembled enough modified barges and shipping to ensure transportation of the invasion force. He is recognized as the foremost authority on this topic. German records show only 65 vessels out of several thousand vessels assembled were destroyed and that’s only 3%.
The German reference for ‘motor boats’, actually refer to fishing vessel ranging from small Drifters to large whalers. They were all able to cross the channel. Schenk reports that 1/3 of the barges were motorized and would have dominated the first wave [1/2 of the 1250 barges were motorized]. With every passing month this percentage would increased. Every wave after this required only 400 motorized barges, since the bulk of the towed barges were mostly in reserve or deployed on either side of the channel, to speed up loading and unloading over the shore. Each barge was equipped with multiple tow lines to cover breakage and attacks.
The Germans navy invaded Norway and Denmark with 150 vessels and lost 28 or less than 1/5 of the force, hardly ‘gutted’. Considering the KM command thought they would lose 1/2 of the force, they did rather well. The maximum invasion distance was Narvik at 2000 km , while the average distance from German to southern Norway was more like 400-500 km. The Germans sent supplies from months afterwards and the allies could do nothing to interdict this. The RAF experience fighting the Germans was so traumatic, bomber command was forced switch to night bombing for the rest of the war.
The more you objectively study this, the more you realize only a miracle could have saved the British and that’s exactly what they got. Hitler believed they were part of his Aryan Race and hoped he could convince them to step aside and let him get on with his racial agenda.
