Invasion, 1940 [Hardcover]

Derek Robinson's book purportedly reveals a 'fresh' perspective about the Battle of Britain. Upon finishing his book, it seems to me that his thesis can be boken down to the following:

- The Royal navy deserves the real credit for preventing a German cross-channel invasion of the British Isles
- The RAF was incapable of stopping an invasion fleet if Hitler really felt like sending one over
- That he did not, was a tribute to the Royal Navy
- Most people tend to believe that the RAF alone was responsible for "saving" Britain in the high summer of 1940, when they should really be thanking the RN.

First, Robinson's thesis is not new, nor will it strike any readers as new, unless his readers are people who haven't read anything newer than 1942 British wartime propoganda to get their history. Second, Robinson's thesis isn't, in my view, totally correct. His book tells the now familiar story of the battle from the perspective that the German invasion couldn't succeed in the face of the Royal Navy, which is true, and also from the perspective that the RAF couldn't stop a German invasion in 1940, which is far more debatable.

In order to reach his conclusion that the Royan Navy deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping Germany's planned invasion, Robinson writes a lot of different chapters about a lot of diverse topics, from German paratroopers to Hitler's chronic lying. Here are my opinions on some of Robinson's supposedly controversial and fresh perspectives:

- The wehrmacht couldn't invade Britain without first neutralizing the RAF and the Royal Navy. (This should strike nobody as news, though apparently Robinson would like to think that most people forgot all about the Royal Navy and succommed to an infatuation with the RAF)

- German Paratroops suffered heavy losses in their operations during WW2 and weren't as effective as people believed; in fact, in Robinson's words they are "...the most overrated soldiers of WW2' (despite their "overrated" status, German paratroops did achieve notable feats during the war, and do not in my opinion deserve Robinson's dismissal as "forlorn hopes." Allied paratroops suffered similar heavy losses later in the war despite their huge training costs and elite status, and in fact paratroops in general weren't quite as effective as the generals wished, which is why after the war commanders severely reduced their role in operational planning. In fact, on D-Day 1944 Allied commanders were prepared to suffer near to 100% casualties among the paratroop spearheads, if only they would achieve their objectives. Hitler's reluctance to launch massive air drops stemmed less from his disbelief that they would succeed -- albeit at heavy loss -- than from his fear that they indeed would suffer heavily and damage the moral of the German people, who at the time of Crete 1941 were still used to inexpensive victory).

- The Junkers Ju-52 was slow, vulnerable, and shot down in fairly large numbers (really? you're kidding).

- The DB-601 engine made the Messerschmitt Bf-109 one of the best fighter planes in the world (not news at all. What IS suprising is that Robinson takes two chapters to tell us what we already know -- the Me-109E and Supermarine Spitfire Marks I and II were very evenly matched)

- The Junkes Ju-87 should have been able to destroy the radar masts at Dover and other areas because the Luftwaffe had achieved local air superiority over Southeast England (and yet, Robinson later dismisses the Ju-87 as too vulnerable to use in the battle, and deletes them from the figure of available German aircraft to make the numerical disparity between the Luftwaffe and RAF less pronounced)

- The Luftwaffe never outnumbered the RAF 7 to 1; it was more like 2 to 1, and even this lower figure is only because we must add the bombers to the fighters (I never read a reliable book anywhere that claimed the luftwaffe outnumbered the RAF by more than 2 or 3 to 1. The only place I'd ever read that the Luftwaffe was seven times bigger than the RAF was wartime propoganda, about as reliable as USAAF gunners' claims that they had shot down 500 German fighters in an air raid. Again, Robinson fails to provide anything truly controversial)

- The Supermarine Spitfire didn't equip nearly as many squadrons as the Hawker Hurricane, and most RAF kills during the Battle of Britain were earned in the Hurricanes (again, surprises no one, though Robinson apparently believes this is staggering, new information that no one presented before)

- the .303 machine guns on RAF fighters would have been ineffective against invasion barges because the barges' skin was too thick (this is debatable and assumes that all of the thousands of barges would have thick skins, and ROOFS, and Robinson himself points out that not all of them did. Robinson confuses the reader later when he says that British destoyers wouldn't waste shells or torpedoes on the barges -- they would fire on the tugs pulling the barges. Why wouldn't the RAF just strafe the vulnerable tugs relentlessly and leave the barges dead in the water, with nothing to pull them? At any rate, sooner or later the troops would have to disembark from the barges and then, unless the Luftwaffe had utter air superiority over the landing area, the troops would be slaughtered by the "ineffective" machine gun bullets of the RAF -- and a ready-and-waiting British army. And what ABOUT those torpedoes? A barge is a fairly large vessel, and if it is only moving at 3 or 4 knots as Robinson points out, aircraft armed with torpedoes could be savagely effective against them. Fairey Battles could be thus equipped, as could Bristol blenheims and other aircraft, including Swordfish from the Royal Navy carriers. If the fighters of the RAF remained an intact force, they could escort such admittedly vulnerable aircraft against the invasion fleet. Robinson forgets from time to time that in a WW2 battle between aircraft with air superiority and surface units, the aircraft almost always won. German aircraft didn't have total air superiority at Dunkirk thanks to a healthy and unexpected dose of the RAF, therefore the germans weren't as effective as they might have been).

- Robinson points out (in a quote) that the nightmare of every invasion fleet is a cruiser loose among the troopships. This is true enough, but he forgets to also point out that getting bombed and strafed from an unsuppressed enemy air force can be just as nightmarish.

The list goes on and on, but the point is that Robinson never really tells the reader anything they haven't heard before. It's an interesting read, but it's not as shocking as it would like to believe itself to be.

Really? The invasion couldn't have occurred without destroying the Royal Navy? This isn't surprising. What is surprising is that Robinson seems to think that nobody else knows this. Every read person knows that the German invasion couldn't have taken place without sea and air security. Robinson can search his own archives and probably see what happens to a capital ship traveling at battle speed when it comes under determined air attack (Prince of Wales, Repulse, sunk by single and twin engined HIGH-LEVEL Japanese bombers at Malaya, 1941). What in the world does he think will happen to those British battleships, cruisers, and destroyers in the channel opposing those barges, if the RAF had ceased to exist to protect them? And, what does he think is going to happen to those slow German barges in the channel when they get attacked by Blenheims, Whitleys, Hampdens, battles, hurricanes, spitfires -- literally everything the RAF has got to throw -- if the Luftwaffe can't protect THEM? Robinson seriously underestimates the huge difference air power has. It WILL make or break an invasion. Without utter, fantastically unchallenged air superiority in 1944, the normandy invasion would have been an orgy of destruction by the Luftwaffe. That is precisely why allied planners were more concerned with crippling the Germany air force than they were in crippling the german navy. They knew that without the air force to protect it, the navy was dead meat anyway.

Robinson also comes across as a bit smug and conescending when he points out that the German industry was full of incompetence, laziness and corruption, and thus couldn't come up with enough Me-109s or a competent drop tank for the fighters to extend their range. One might say that Britain suffered similar problems and thus had to rely (totally, in some cases) on American tanks, aircraft, and other weaponry and supplies to beat Germany, and only then with America providing most of the troops and leadership. And even THEN only with Russia bleeding away most of the German army on the Eastern Front.

It's an okay book, but you've heard it all before, and probably without any hype as to it being "new" or "controversial."

Derek Robinson, the author of the excellent novel "Piece of Cake" which I really enjoyed reading some 22 years ago, has used his vast knowledge about the RAF during 1940 to write a book that totally dispels the myth that the RAF was the only thing between the Nazis taking over the U.K. The book can be described as a three part analysis, where the first one deals with the story of how Britain was cornered in Dunkirk and saved its army, the second one deals with the opposite leaders, the planes, the strategies and the tactics and the final one overturns the myth of the RAF Fighter Command which denied the enemy the chance of an invasion. It was refreshing to read a book that suggests that the Royal Navy posed more of a threat to the German Armed Forces than the RAF did. The German preparation was woefully inadequate, spanning just two months, compared to the allies who spent 2-3 years preparing. The prevailing view of history, largely based on propaganda from the Churchill government of the time, is that plucky little Britain was only saved from the clutches of Naziism by the valiant, outnumbered, RAF (with assorted other nationalities thrown in). Derek Robinson's revisionist history of the invasion scare opens up other areas of investigation, such as the power of the Royal Navy - dwarfing any possible German attack - and the ineptitude of the German running of the war in 1940. While never denigrating the memory of the RAF pilots, he shows very well that had the RAF been wiped from the air in the South East of England in 1940, any invasion fleet would have either been utterly annihilated in the channel or would have landed so few troops that the British Army, despite its desparate shortages, would have been able to contain and destroy them at leisure. Telling people that there was no threat would not have galvanised the country, so it's entirely understandable that the story of "The Few" became the accepted view for many years. Robinson's crisp writing makes for a quick, easy read but I must praise his attention to detail and the correct military nomenclature, since he avoided many usual errors on ranks and names. It is really difficult to argue with his conclusions, and obvious as they are, the Battle of Britain will continue to be cloaked in mystique for many years to come.

This is a tremendously interesting and fun read!

In "Invasion 1940" novelist Derek Robinson tries his hand at World War II history - with great success. Already known as a talented writer, Robinson now proves himself to be an equally skilled historian.

Robinson shows that a great deal of what we think we know about the Battle of Britain is myth and he provides authoritative sources and figures to prove that the British were never as heavily outnumbered as Churchill later claimed. Furthermore, the Royal Air Force was fighting with superior aircraft and closer to its own bases, advantages that helped to negate the German superiority in planes.

Robinson argues that it was the fear of the Royal Navy, and not just the Royal Air Force, that deterred Hitler from launching his cross-channel invasion of the British isles, Operation Sea Lion. A good part of the German navy had been lost at the hands of the British during operations in Norway and Hitler's admirals were in no position to contest British superiority of the Channel.

"Invasion 1940" is a thought provoking book that will change the way most of us look at The Battle of Britain and the Royal Air Force and Navy in World War II as Churchill and the British struggled to survive.

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