Briton said:
Air superiority would probably resulted in invasion despite the Royal Navy.
As you said the RAF did a marvellous job but one theory is that they were all but defeated when Hitler diverted air forces to bomb London and other British towns and cities rather than continue to attack the RAF and our airfields etc. He did this in retaliation for a bombing raid on Germany. This allowed the RAF to recover and eventually to them winning the Battle of Britain. So you could say the 'Blitz' saved us.
No it wouldn't.
This comes up again and again.
Please explain to me how a Luftwaffe that failed to sink enough stationary civilian vessels in daylight to stop Dunkirk suddenly had the ability a few weeks later to destroy moving warships at night ?
The RN could have sent dozens upon dozens of Destroyers into the channel at night, and have them safely out of the escorted range of the Luftwaffes bombers by daytime. Don't forget that the invasion would have been mounted in October when the nights are getting longer. The risk of fog would have been very real too.
The Germans were having to use river barges that were towed at around 5 knots and were fairly unseaworthy. They sank without any help, never mind with the attentions of the worlds largest navy.
They only carried out one large exercise with these barges. Most never found the right beach, some sank and the rest spent hours milling around while things got worked out. This was in summer, in daylight and without getting shot at.
They also didn't have enough crews. They actually had to strip the Kreigmarines major surface units for crews, leaving them effectively combat ineffective. Who was going to protect the barges now ?
They didn't carry out any reconnaissance of the intended beaches, didn't know anything about the local conditions in terms of tides and sandbanks etc.
They didn't have enough barges to land the assault divisions whole, and even then still didn't have enough to supply them once they had landed. The plan (yes, i've read it) called for the troops to be landed and to not expect any resupply from the sea for a number of days. They were to be supplied from the air. We know how that worked out at Stalingrad don't we ?
I could go on, but lets just say that the whole thing was so shockingly amatuer that frankly we'd have done well to let them land unopposed and just let them walk into the POW cages a week later.
Not that we knew all this at the time, so the brave efforts of the RAF were certainly not in vain.
