Originally Posted by
Danny42C
diginagain (#15),
From the "Battle of the Atlantic" [Wiki]:
and.."
I believe that at this time, the Navy had its back to the wall, as tonnage was being sunk faster than it could be replaced...
Any notion that the Navy could divert ships to combat a cross channel invasion without air supremacy is fanciful, Later experience (Malaya ?) showed what happens when surface vessels without air support come within range of a land based enemy air force.
None of this diminishes the heroism of the RN, and of the merchant seamen, which (IMHO) has never been properly acknowledged.
Danny..
The Luftwaffe had minimal anti-shipping capability in 1940; certainly no torpedo aircraft to speak of. As for bombers, the RN lost only four destroyers from air attack during the entire Dunkirk evacuation. See here for the RN's myriad MTBs, MGBs, armed trawlers and drifters, minesweepers, destroyers, cruisers etc., that would have created mayhem for any German landing craft, towed lighters and river barges:
Their wakes alone would have been enough to capsize most troop carrying vessels and I doubt they would have presented clear targets to aircraft when mixing it with the invasion force. Most of the German surface fleet had already been sunk during the
Battles of Narvik.
REPULSE and POW were sunk off Malaya in Dec 1941, over a year after the Battle of Britain and more than two years after the start of the Battle of the Atlantic. These vessels were totally bereft of air cover when they were saturated by Japanese aircraft which had taken a leaf out of the Fleet Air Arm's book and specialised in attacking ships. For all that, the two capital ships managed to evade over 40 of the 49 torpedoes launched against them and as few as six (but possibly eight) found their target (
link).
Interestingly, the initial wave of 25 Japanese aircraft dropped a total of 33 bombs (17 x 500 kg and 16 x 250 kg) on the two ships but only achieved
a single hit with a 250 kg bomb. This started a small fire on the hangar deck of REPULSE. Several high level bombers also straddled the capital ships during the later torpedo attacks but, again,
only achieved a single hit with a bomb that fell among the wounded gathered in POW's hangar and caused extensive casualties. Neither of these bombs succeeded in penetrating the ships' armour.
Nine other Japanese aircraft mistook one of the three escorting destroyers for a battleship. They each dropped a 500 kg armour-piercing bomb but
all missed their target. The destroyer was left unscathed and subsequently helped rescue the survivors from the battleships. In the absence of RAF air cover, a supporting carrier might have made all the difference, especially as the Japanese bombers had no fighter escort owing to the distances involved.