“I do not say that the French will not come. I only say they will not come by sea.” So said the Earl of St Vincent in 1801 of Britain's enemy. The same was true in 1940. The plan to transport Hitler's all-conquering Wehrmacht across the Channel was a hastily improvised affair, relying on a cobbled-together array of 168 freighters, 1,910 barges and 419 tugboats and trawlers. There was little co-ordination between German army, air force and navy. Then there was the small matter of the Royal Navy. As the German general Alfred Jodl put it in his operational outline: “England is in possession of command of the sea.”
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