In message . net,
Steven P. McNicoll writes
"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...
Nope. At best the Luftwaffe could intervene in daylight if
they managed to win and maintain air superiority

Aren't we now working under the premise that the Luftwaffe won the BoB and
has air superiority over the channel and southern England?

How do they destroy the northern Groups? The RAF can retreat out of
Luftwaffe reach, and surge back south (at a cost).

BUT the
invasion force was going to take more than 24 hours to
reach the invasion beaches and the cruisers and destroyers
sortieing from Harwich cwould be in amongst them at
night in the same way the Japanese steamed down the
slot at Guadalcanal. The Germans had no equivalent naval force
to counter those raids.

Why must the German invasion force operate at night?

To have any chance of surviving at all. Night offers at least some
concealment. Also, the Channel has vicious tides and a three-knot barge
starting before dawn will be most unlikely to arrive before dusk... and
trying to land and supply a hastily-improvised invasion in the dark is a
recipe for disaster. The invasion wants to land with a long tail of
daylight available for command, control and resupply: that means at best
an overnight crossing and a morning landing.


The German invasion force lost a tithe of its strength just tied up in
port, and had to be scattered into inland waterways to avoid British
attacks. To quote HQ Naval Group West's report to Berlin on 12 September
1940,

"The harbours at Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne cannot be used as
night anchorages for shipping because of the danger of bombing and
shelling. Units of the British Channel Fleet are able to operate almost
unmolested in the Channel."

Hard to launch an invasion when your ports of departure aren't even
usable in darkness...

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk