seeker

Very few naval messages were read during this period due to the more rigerous methods used in naval cyphers. As far as the Army Airforce enigma traffic, Bletchly park was still using very user specific methods to break into cypher network traffic. At this time decrypting methods were trying to bring in new blood and thus many inexperienced operators were working in the signals intercepts. As a result few messages were being read in anything like 'near real time'. Delays were more likely measured in days, not hours...that would not happen until later in the war. Source "Battle for the code", Hugh Sebag-Montefiore.

"Chronology of the War at Sea 1939-1945" reports that on 2nd july , Swordfish from 812 squadron attack invasion barges at Rotterdam. On July 4 1940 in the English Channel Stukas from StG2 sunk 4 freighers plus an auxiliary AA ship and severely damaged 9 others totaling 40,236 tons. Meanwhile Schnellboot sunk a freighter, while two other ships are also torpedoed by other Schnellboot. Peter Smith in "Hold the Narrow Sea" expands upon the attack and its importance. Two Gruppe of Stuka attacked the convoy that was escorted only by a pair of destroyers , but no air cover. Then the Gruppes attacked Portland harbor and sank another ship and damaged the others mentioned above. Churchill ordered all subsquent convoys to be escorted by a six plane squadron when in danger zones. One of the key corner stones of the British Anti invasion strategy hinged on operating from forward ports to interdict German invasion armadas but the Portland attack would lead to the Dover pounding some weeks later that showed the Luftwaffe could shut down what ever ports they selected and their was little the RAF could do to prevent them. The Chain Home radar net work was designed to give enough time to mount counter attacks against bomber streams heading inland but not along the coast line. Later in July the Admiralty would attempt to get around the German interdiction efforts by redirecting convoys into creeping from port to port on overnight leaps, in an attempt to evade the Luftwaffe. But the Kreigsmarine Radar controled gun batteries plotted the coarses and ambushs were excuted overnight to scatter such convoys enough for them to be still at sea at dawn bringing further attacks from Stuka squadrons. The only bright side to this was such predictable attacks , gave the RAF time to assemble large enough fighter groups so that in one attack they were able to shoot down 30 stukas at the lost of 20 RAF fighters in the pitch battle.

Same storm the next day. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Pau...ppinesAug16.gif 12 meter waves sound massive!

Aug 15 , 2007 there seems to be a very heavy storm/hurricane brewing off the Philippines. From the following web site I down load this map of significant wave heights http://www.oceanweather.com/data/ "South China Sea" http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Pau...rmAug152007.gif waves reaching 12meters height http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Pau...nespressure.gif Pressure http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Pau...ippinestemp.gif Water temp

That might be true from the perspective of the allies and the way they fought wars. But from the german perspective, a direct assault on UK was far more effective than waging years of extremely costly and useless attritional UBoat & commerce raiding warfare. Further more a direct assault was much more in keeping with Blitzkrieg methods. Finally if the Germans were unprepared for an invasion, so too were the Brits. The RN had only the ablity to patrol 1/6 of the seas around the UK so they erected blocades based on geographical chock points [English Channel & GIUK]. The UK coast was wide open to port to port invasion. They had just established a coastal defense force of trawlers ,backed up by about 90 older destroyers plus 'Dads Army' on shore...but these were just a shell. Only about 1/4 of the trawlers had large enough guns and in any event only 1/3 of these warships and auxiliary warships could be available at any one time due to the defensive nature of their patrols. By contrast the German fleet could surge their entire surface fleet [as they did in Norway]. Worse still only about 2/3 of the major ports had coastal batteries , while the raw recruits of "Dads Army" had ~ 1 days supply of small arms ammo to back these up. The Admiralty and Churchill knew this all to well , they assumed the Germans would first have to amass a hugh fleet of trawlers and barges prior to any invasion, which ofcourse would take weeks, thus giving away the element of surprise and time for Home fleet to respond. But the Germans were aware of this too and made preperations In point of fact the germans planned for lossing upto 1/2 their invasion force before calling it a day. Had the operation been planned with the usual desception, it might very well have worked, especially they had not made the mistake of "Dunkirk" and thrown away the element of surprise with the "BoB" and their surface fleet in the "Invasion of Norway". There is no doubt it would have been a horrible fight anyway you look at it, with tens of thousands of casulties on each side per week, but I would put the Wehrmachts chances of over running the UK atleast 50-50...worth the risk. The reason the so called bluff theory has only stuck around , is due to Hitlers odd irrational prewar belief that he could control the British reaction and avoid war with them altogether. Even the most elementry study of recent history convinced people like Admiral Raeder [German navy chief] and Blomberg [Defense minister], that a war with Poland and France, mean't a war with the UK and probably the USSR. Their fears of the USSR were silenced by the 'non aggression pact' with Stalin, but nothing like that occured with the UK. As far back as 1935 Raeder was trying to convince Hitler of the importance of a navy to fight the RN. By 1937 the Luftwaffe were conducting studies on what it would take to defeat the RAF. Hitler resisted all these efforts forbidding any preperation for war with the UK. Had these prewar efforts to plan for UK invasion as an follow up annex to the invasion of France, then I would put the German chances at over 90%.

There is no doubt that Hitler forbade any preperations for war directly with the UK, up until the invasion of France. I gather that Hitler firmly believed the British would cave and withdraw from the war , when push came to shove.....which did work towards British advantage. Well I suppose thats a matter of opinion. But the information I have is that after the fall of France and the defeat of the British expedionary forces, the British defenses were in a shambles and few military leaders or people for that matter, held out any hope. One of the things that saved the british was just how difficult it would be to cross the channel and invade, due to the seas in the channel often being the worse in the North Sea.

Thanks for that information. I was wondering how unlikely it was that the channel seas would be calm [enough for small boats] during the summer of 1940...or any other summer in the channel. Can any one answer this? Later that year , weather would also intervene in the war. The german planning for invasion of britain was to be devolved into converted river barges to transport some of the troops, weapons and supplies across the Channel to England. But these barges were considered only good enough for sea state 2 and wind force 4 [any one know what those mean?]. Worse still they were to be towed if the operation was to be mounted in 1940, since the program to add power to these landing craft barges would not be completed until early 1941.