The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

fighting over France had only been the beginning. It was a sobering
thought.
It was a sobering thought for Air Chief Marshal Dowding too. It was
true that the Air Ministry had agreed to form three new Spitfire squadrons
and it was also true that he had gained those squadrons that had been
operating in France, which, on paper, meant an overall gain of eleven
squadrons, bringing Fighter Command up to fifty-eight squadrons in all.
However, these figures did not mask the fact that many of these units were
unfit for operational service and that nearly all were now badly below
strength. Cold statistics made for harsh reading: 106 fighters had been lost
over Dunkirk, of which sixty-seven were Spitfires. In all, 396 Hurricanes
had been shot down or destroyed in France. Two hundred and eighty fighter
pilots had lost their lives or been taken prisoner. This meant that Dowding
now only had 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes with which to defend Britain.
Furthermore, the number of anti-aircraft guns was woefully inadequate. If
the Germans attacked Britain right away, Dowding’s forces would be hard
pushed to keep them at bay.
And it was an attack right away that Britain’s Chiefs of Staff thought
most likely. On 29 May, they had put together a report on ‘Invasion of the
United Kingdom’. The Germans had two options – either to continue the
battle against France in an effort to knock her out of the war at an early
stage, or to stabilize the front in France and concentrate a major attack on
Britain. A counter-attack of sufficient strength by the French now seemed to
them unlikely. Britain was also, in their view, Germany’s main enemy, and
defeat of the United Kingdom would lead to the subsequent collapse of
France as a matter of course. ‘In our view, therefore,’ they concluded, ‘it is
highly probable that Germany is now setting the stage for delivering a full
scale attack on England’ – an attack they believed they were neither
prepared nor organized enough to repel. Their biggest fear was a lightningfast
Channel crossing of massed German forces in which they were able to
establish a foothold. ‘We have ample evidence,’ they warned, ‘of the
difficulty of dislodging the German once he has established himself on
enemy soil.’ They recommended that the country be ‘warned and roused to
the imminent danger’, that the army at home – and that included the LDV –
be brought to a high degree of alertness, and that defence works along the
coast should be improved without delay.