IF HITLER INVADES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20526, 9 April 1941, Page 2

IF HITLER INVADES

DIFFICULTIES IN WAY CHANNEL OFFERS PERILS EXPERT ON CHANCES In a thorough study, such as I have been making, detail piles upon detail of overwhelming difficulties for Adolf Hitler in an invasion of Britain, writes Colonel Frederick Palmer, United States military expert and historian, for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

His surface naval force being quite unequal to challenge open battle with that of the British, we are told how he will protect a lane for the passage of his transports —or a 50-mile circle as some have it—by bombers, submarines and torpedo speed boats. But the British also have bombers, submarines and speed boats with much larger and more vulnerable targets tc shoot at.

British destroyers, cruisers and submarines will run through the ring ol guarding fire to get to closer quarters, if need be, with that procession o ; barges which can go no faster than 15 knots an hour, 10 being a more likely figure.

Bombs For Barges

It will take only a very small torpedo, plane-borne or otherwise, tc punch a hole below the waterline in a barge which will be just as easy prey of a 50-pound bomb, while machine-gun dives will spray the close-packed soldiers on board. In place of a big armour-piercing shell from a battleship will be one -thav bursts into several projectiles which -tear flesh, shrapnel-fashion, or penetrates the bottom of a barge. Naval ships out of range of guns that can tire from a barge platform will be scattered targets with torpedo and anti-aircraft defence which the barges will lack in any adequate measure.

Consider the number of barges to land an initial force of 200,000 which would require at least the capacity of •several liners like the Queen Mary. And this is for troops alone.

Transport of Equipment

Hitler must also transport hundreds of tanks, guns, motor trucks and an amount of equipment and ammunition which will call for more tonnage than the troops. All these may not move out from shore separately as though they were bathers jumping into a river to swim across. They must issue from the narrow harbour entrances of northern France, not in mass, but in column. Night or day the 'British will know they are coming and begin blasting them at once.

In normal precedent the Germans will attempt landing at two or three points as feints. It will be only a matter of minutes before British air scouts will be able to judge by the size of the movement, the location ol the main objective. For this the Germans must make a string of beach heads along an extensive stretch of favourable beach. They cannot pass equipment from barge to barge in column. They must have ■heavy mobile artillery, guns of larger calibre than 755, or they will be at the mercy of guns of longer range, inland. High Or Low Tide” Speculative reports that low tide will favour a landing are far-fetched until tanks and big guns can be dropped by parachute, which, at present, belongs in the same domain of fiction as tile death ray which will burn up armies and navies.

Low tide means more sand for the tanks, guns and trucks to go through if they can be run off the barges successfully. Manoeuvres have shown that both mobile guns of large-calibre and tanks should have piers for prompt disembarkation.

A detail in the receptionists' programme is a chain of mines on the beach to welcome the invaders as they rush ashore, their cohesion already broken by losses of men and mechanisation in the sea passage. A smokescreen, or a fog, which blankets the landing, may be more confusing to the invaders than to the defenders. A wind which blows gas ashore in the morning may blow it

back on the beach and the barges in the afternoon. And the British have gas, too, which they can concentrateon a small area along with all the power of their naval and army gun and machine-gun fire and the Royal Air Force bombers. British Land Forces

British bombers will have a fax shorter radius than in raids over Germany, shorter than the German bombers from their cross-channel bases, while German bombers will be too intent on protecting the passage and landing to blast British cities.

Suppose Hitler does get two-thirds—-a large estimate—of tiie survivors of his initial force established ashore. It will face a British army of 2,000,000 which will be speeding tanks, guns and truck-borne troops at 30 and 40 miles an hour to the point of the attack, every unit having its assigned position. Food, ammunition, supplies of all kinds for the invaders and all reinforcements will have to run the same gamut of fire as the initial force in its crossing. It will take a huge number af men to replace casualties and replacements of barges sunk to maintain a German army of a million in Britain.

And will that be enough? We have the answer in the fortitude the British have shown under the bombing ordeal. In meeting an invasion they know they are lighting for all they have in the world. As for the Canadian troops in Britain, who have been a year without action, there will be no holding them. This time. Hitler’s soldiers will be met by such mechanisation as that of the British in Libya. His prestige in some minds as a miracle military genius of victory will be submerged in a disaster which will pile tanks and dead on the shore and scatter floating bodies ol' his soldiers on the waters he could not conquer.