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I’m going to start off this particular thread with a little bit of background and analysis, starting with an extract from ‘Why Sealion is Not an Option for Hitler to Win the War, by Alison Brooks.’

“If we turn our attention to point 3 for a while, the standard response is to say that the Luftwaffe could sink the RN ships. However, the Luftwaffe of the period had a pathetic record against warships. 39 RN destroyers took part in the Dunkirk evacuation. This operation required manoeuvring in a small harbour, with periods stationary while embarking troops. The Luftwaffe had command of the air for long periods. In these ideal conditions, the Luftwaffe managed to put out of commission a grand total of 4 destroyers. 4 out of 39 does not bode well for the Luftwaffe's chances.”

I have often got the impression that the Brookites on this board have a rather unrealistic opinion of the Luftwaffe’s anti-shipping capabilities. After all Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk, started on 26th May and ended on 4th June 1940, that’s ten days in total. If you assume the Luftwaffe had 300 Ju87s and that each dive bomber was capable of two sorties per day then that equates to 6000 sorties over the ten day period, or in other words the Ju87 took 1500 sorties to disable each of the four destroyers Alison Brooks mentions (note she states they were put out of commission and not sunk).

If, however you dig a little deeper you’ll realise that Dynamo started on the evening of 26th May and the Luftwaffe ceased its assault on Dunkirk on 2nd June once the British switched to night time operations. So that’s now just seven days or a maximum of 4200 dive bomber sorties, the equivalent of 1050 sorties per destroyer put out of commission. There seems to be a slight error in even this logic, in addition to the four British destroyers there were also two French destroyers ‘put out of commission’. So all of a sudden the figures go from one destroyer out of commission for every 1500 sorties to one destroyer out of commission for every 700 sorties. AND these six destroyers were sunk not put out of commission. If you add to those destroyers sunk the extra ten that were put out of commission requiring ten or more days to repair then the actual figure goes down to one destroyer out of commission for every 262.5 sorties. Still a pretty poor performance.

Dig even deeper and it must be noted that the Ju87 was only able to operate effectively for only 2 ½ days over Dunkirk because of the weather (low clouds and rain) and also that due to the distances from the Ju87 bases to Dunkirk the likelihood is that they were only able to conduct one sortie per day. This is backed up by figures contained in the book ‘Allied Fighter Aces by Mike Spick ‘ that states that between the 27th May and 2nd June there were just 805 Ju87 sorties flown. With sixteen destroyers put out of commission by 805 sorties the figures now show that one destroyer was put out of commission for 50 sorties. This is a marked difference to the initial 1 for 1500 but is still not amazing.

Let’s apply a little logic now as all of this assumes that the only targets amongst the 800+ vessels at sea, the port facilities and the land forces were the twenty or so destroyers present at any one time. Remember of the over 200 vessels sunk at least 70 of them were ships which means that it is certain the destroyers were not the only targets. I believe it is highly likely that at least half of the dive bomber sorties ended with attacks on targets other than the destroyers.

So rather than the ‘pathetic record against warships’ the following is the truth:

· The ratio of sorties per immobilisation of a destroyer was actually somewhere in the region of at most 1 to 20 or 30 (and probably lower).

· 38 Royal Navy destroyers were put out of action by air attack up to the middle of September 1940, that’s either sunk or immobilised.

· In total the Luftwaffe sank 19 destroyers, 2 large destroyers and 2 light cruisers from the air up to the end of July 1940.

· Going back to Dunkirk, of the 6 destroyers sunk only one was attacked in the harbour area, the rest were attacked in open water off the beaches rather than ‘manoeuvring in a small harbour, with periods stationary while embarking troops.

As always, I seem to have gone on a little too much without really getting to the point so here goes ….

Given that the Luftwaffe were able to sink 6 Destroyers (with another 12 out of commission), 70 other ships and another 200 or so smaller vessels in 2 ½ days of a seven-day period what do people think is likely to happen if the weather allowed for attacks on every day?

On the face of it as the time period would be 2.8 times longer it might seem sensible to assume that there would be 16 destroyers sunk, 34 destroyers out of commission, 196 ships sunk and 560 other vessels sunk. None of these figures includes ships sunk by other causes. Basically, the whole fleet would be lost. NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN without the British reacting.

Firstly, few attacks would happen on 27th May, the Germans were still attacking other targets in the main; Calais, retreating ground forces etc. Secondly, it only took 2 ½ days of full-scale attacks for the British to change tactics and continue the majority of the evacuation at night only. So, the chances are that the fleet losses would be slightly higher in real life, maybe another 10% at most. The main effect would probably be a shortening of Operation Dynamo with maybe 70-100,000 fewer troops rescued.
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