True, but everything I've read (plus talking to a few RN officers over the years) said that destroying the invasion fleet in the Channel was _the_ priority. If it looked like anything was going to get anywhere near the landing beaches you can bet an all-out effort would be made to keep that from happening regardless of the cost, planned or not.
yes. The RAF and the Royal Navy will attempt to (and succeed in) crushing the beachheads, whose destruction is
the priority. On the same note, I can think of several cases where being
the priority does not necessitate that every avalible gun be thrown at the target. In world war One (1914 to be precise), taking Paris was
the priority for the Germans, but many divisions were lost in diversions to the east, nancy, or reducing belgian fortresses. In World War Two, taking Denmark during operation weserbung could be considered
the priority in the long term, but only one or two divisions were actually committed. The war in the desert could have turned vital for either side, but I cannot describe either montgomery or rommel as having ever posessed every avalible gun. The fact is, the British had, in the vicinity of the landing, 5 battleships to match the Scharnhorst and Gneisnau, at least 11 cruisers to face 1 or 2 german ones, and innumerable destroyers. You can point out the U-boats, but in the english channel, I cannot see them (even with minefields) being enough to stop actual warships which will only care about them long enough to sink them. The royal navy can reduce the kriegsmarine to bruning hulks without commiting all of it's avalible forces.
And if they land (asb) and the royal navy manages to exterminate itself in the process (wtf? is a better description), the British army can simply destroy the germans through numbers (that, and the fact that the landing forces have no heavy equipment). Honestly, any form of Sealion will result in the following:
Germany: The Kriegsmarine crushed, the Luftwaffe recieves a bloody nose, a few heer divisions are gone
United Kingdom: The Royal navy incurs some losses, but those are easily offset by new construction (and the lack of any remaining German opponent), the RAF takes a beating while inflicting superior losses on the Luftwaffe, and the local land forces easily defeat the invasion.