Originally posted by SteffK
I can agree that they had an impact on the outcome due to thier presence, but to say they actually won is complete RolloX!!!
A couple of points are worth making here regarding Thomas Harding's article. Firstly, it contains no new information. Even the military historians quoted are only re-iterating views held at the time and expressed, and published, on numerous occasions since. Operation sea lion was always in serious doubt, not only from the actions of the RAF and the Royal Navy, but from the elements. Even the Spanish failed to cross the treacherous waters of the channel unopposed in extremely sea worthy ships, the idea that the Germans could have succeed in barges, against strong opposition, has never been taken seriously, not even by the Germans.
However, even more import is that the logic of the arguments used in the article are flawed in a number of important ways, apparently for little other purpose than sensationalism. What are the flaws?
Firstly, you can't claim that a battle was won by non participants, just because they could have won if they had been called upon to do so. No doubt, the Royal Navy would have done us proud had they been required to break up an invasion, but the simple fact remains that they were not. Why not? Simply because they were not needed, the fighting was carried out by the RAF, and the battle was won before Royal Navy intervention was necessary. Nobody doubts they could have won it, clearly some believe they should have won, but they didn't. The RAF did.
Secondly, to agree on who won the Battle of Britain, one needs to be clear about the victory conditions. It has always been accepted that the Germans wanted to invade, and the Battle would be decided by the event and success of an invasion. Even that is in doubt, since some believe the invasion itself was an expensive bluff, intended to bring Churchill to peace negotiations so that Hitler would be free to invade Russia. However, if we accept that the invasion threat was genuine, there were two prerequisites, the first was air superiority, and the second was keeping the British fleet out of the channel. The Germans believed that if they could achieve air superiority, they could keep the Royal Navy out of the channel by the use of mines and dive bombing. Could they have done so? We will never know for sure, but it is true that shipping losses in the channel were so heavy that most merchant ships were taking the long way around, and only risking the channel in daylight with RAF escorts.
Even so, the Germans only had a chance if they could maintain air superiority. Also, the Germans knew the value of close air support, and even if they could cross the channel, they would not contemplate an invasion without it.
So everything rested on achieving air superiority. The important thing here is not if that were true, but that is what the Germans believed at the time. So Goring promised to achieve air superiority in time for the invasion to take place before the weather made a channel crossing impossible. So, in reality, victory did not depend on the event and success of an invasion at all, it depended on the Luftwaffe bringing the RAF to battle and depleting it to the point that it no longer presented a threat. This was the perception of the important players at the time, everything that Goring and Park did supports the idea that both sides believed that Victory or defeat rested entirely on air superiority, a battle that could only be fought and won in the air. That's where the battle took place, and the RAF won by virtue of the fact that they prevented the Luftwaffe from achieving air superiority and the resulting cancellation of the invasion. The indefinite postponement of operation Sea Lion marked the victory. The battle was over and the RAF had won it.
What the Royal Navy coulda, woulda, or shoulda done if something that never happened (an invasion) had happened, is a matter of pointless speculation and conjecture.
Badboy
