EP 01 - Who really won the Battle of Britain?

Waterworld Flotilla

- Episode 01 -

Who really won the Battle of Britain?

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Waterworld Flotilla

28 November 2025

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Who really won the Battle of Britain?

EPISODE 1 - Waterworld Flotilla

Luftwaffe head, Hermann Göring, looking across at the White Cliffs of Dover

After Dunkirk, the ideal moment to invade

Through the long, wet summer of 1940 Britain was fighting for its existence. Hitler’s forces were massing across the Channel and only the self-sacrificing courage of the Royal Air Force prevented an invasion. It’s one of the most important historical memories, a founding narrative of modern Britain.

The problem is that it’s not true.

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Army had been horribly defeated and forced to evacuate from Dunkirk, leaving all of its heavy gear behind. (They left even more precious equipment at French ports between 15 and 25 June.) Two days after the end of the Dunkirk evacuation, Herman Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, proposed to Hitler to land planes in British airfields and hit the British while they were down. But Hitler replied ‘do nothing.’

When France fell on 22 June 1940 Hitler gave the order to demobilise 35 out of 155 divisions. Fifteen other divisions were transferred to the Eastern Front where an offensive was timed for the Spring of 1941. Hitler himself went on holiday, relaxing in Paris, visiting Napoleon’s tomb, touring the battlefields where he (and his dog) had run messages during the First World War. Then he went back to Germany and went picnicking along the Rhine.

German troops test amphibious tanks

'Great Britain was the wrong kind of enemy'

Historian Peter Calvocoressi pointed out years ago (and he worked in British intelligence at the famous Bletchley Park, and later attended the Nuremburg war crimes trials), ‘Great Britain was the wrong kind of enemy for the German forces.’ It was an island with a huge Empire. It would take a formidable amphibious campaign to invade it and a world-wide operation to subdue its forces. And Germany was not equipped for anything of that kind or on that scale.

But at the beginning of July 1940, Hitler’s attitude seems to have changed.

On 16 July 1940, and despite strong discouragement from the Kriegsmarine (navy), Hitler issued Weisung (that is Directive) No 16. It was hardly a ringing battle cry. ‘I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, to carry it out.’

The historian, Peter Fleming - who worked in British Intelligence like James Bond, the creation of his more famous brother Ian - jokes that Hitler’s Directive No 16 ‘lacks the crisp, compulsive, off-with-his-head ring which was a normal feature of Hitler’s style.’

There would be a landing ‘if necessary.’ The operation was codenamed Lion but it was soon downgraded to the much less impressive-sounding Seelöwe Sea Lion.

A serious campaign to cross over and invade?

If you dig deeper, another story begins to emerge

Invasion barges assembled at the German port of Wilhelmshaven - they would have been swamped immediately

They even tried bobbing about on wine barrels

Through July and August 1940 the Germans put together the most extraordinary flotilla of troop-carrying craft and floating tanks. It’s convinced many writers that, even though the Nazis had no long-term intention to invade Britain, in the course of that summer they changed their minds.

For tanks and trucks they seized two thousand of the barges labouring up and down rivers in Germany and the countries they had occupied. Commandeering so many barges could wreck the German economy and risk losing support in Berlin because the capital might run short of coal and food.

They added motor fishing boats, mostly crewed by lads between fifteen and seventeen years old. Since they were not expecting the boats - or the young lads - to make it make back, they fitted them with guns so that they could cover the troops they had put ashore.

Down on the Cotentin Peninsula, in occupied France, German engineers started trying to construct rafts out of bridge girders. Then they had a go with aircraft floats and fuel tanks. They even tried bobbing about on wine barrels. All this astonishing military energy along the Channel coasts looks like a serious campaign to cross over and invade.

But if you dig deeper, another story begins to emerge.

#01 Waterworld Flotilla - Ep 1 Who really won the Battle of Britain?

'Sentinel' by Tim Tolkien (great grandson of JRR), installed in 2000 at Castle Bromwich. The Castle Bromwich Aerodrome Factory produced 12 000 Spitfires and Lancaster bombers 1940-5

They never resolved how to make a beach landing on a rising tide

The German documents also show that, from a standing start on 16 July 1940, they had about ten weeks to contrive, build, test, assemble, rehearse and launch a huge amphibious invasion before the autumn weather would swamp their flimsy rafts and drown their tanks.

It was never remotely realistic. Until long after the summer of 1940 German engineers never resolved absolutely fundamental problems, for example how to make a beach landing on a rising tide or how to get their clever new amphibious tanks over the basic but jaggedly effective tank-barriers the British had put up in every possible landing place.

It would have taken day after murderous day just to off-load the first wave of troops and their equipment at the shoreline. And then they would have faced the problem of supply lines stretched for weeks across the Channel, harassed continuously by the best navy in the world.

Hitler later privately admitted to his naval adjutant that attempting to invade Britain could have cost the Reich in one night many times the 30 000 lives lost taking France. German historian, Peter Schenk concludes, ‘no military commander in his right mind would have given the order to proceed.’

We’re clearly going to have to think more deeply about what exactly the Germans thought they were doing. But before we go there, we need to address one other glorious and venerable, founding myth of modern Britain.

The great story the British have always told about 1940 is that whoever won air superiority would win the Battle for Britain. Well. Is that true?

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