Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
As you well know, he was told by his senior naval figures that an attempt to invade us could well have ended with complete disaster. The Kriegsmarine was in no shape to protect an invasion fleet from the Royal Navy, having lost a lot of its destroyers in Norway and, even if the Luftwaffe had had air superiority, the losses the Grand Fleet could have inflicted on an invasion would have been potentially disastrous.
I once read the views of an Admiral about the summer of 1940; he said the Navy was positively licking its lips at the thought of hundreds of Rhine barges being towed at 4kts across the channel. "There would be no need for shooting," he maintained, "we'd simply have sunk them with our wash."