INVASION THREAT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24346, 10 July 1940, Page 8

INVASION THREAT

MENACE TO BRITAIN SURVEY VQF HAZARDS WILD; MILITARY: GAMBLE The evacuation of the Channel Islands is'not in the circumstances very serious (writes the military correspondent of the Sydney. Morning Herald) The islands nestle' under the lee of the Cotentin Peninsula in Upper Normandy, and have lost all military meaning now that Hitler is in complete control of the French coastline and has ports in France and" Belgium much closer .to Britain. In German hands the Channel Islmds could conceivably be used as submarine bases, but their ports suffer from marked disadvantages, and Germany has larger and better harbours on the mainland coast. Under present conditions, when the British problem is to concentrate all defensive measures in as small and compact an area as possible, the maintenance of the scattered Channel Islands, some of them only nine miles from the French coast, would have meant an unwise dispersion of resources. Once England is besieged, the islands are so many • weakening antennae distinct from the main structure of the British Islands, rnd positively weakening from the point of view of the general effort. Banse's Plan of Attack Britain is drawing in upon herself. The first stage in this process was the declaration of a closed military area in the highlands. The movements of civilians were restricted in order to give full scope to the military defenders. The proclamation of a similar area in the low-lying and lonely _f<?n regions of the east coast a fortnight ago was a step in the same direction: and now the entire east coast from Sussex to the Tweed is closed to,free civilian movement. These avezs will be held, and in last resort, if they should prove untenable in the face of a gigantic assault, it will be easier to fight a retarding action in them u the soldiers are not hsmpered by civilians. , . It may be asiced why the south coast is not also included, now that a flanking move is possible from the Germanoccupied French coast, but. against this, the most likely, lines of assault will be from the east, in a series of consolidated movements, round from Norway to Calais. Moreover, there are several very strong naval bases scattered along the south coast, and the areas they control interlock. If Hitler should risk a land invasion of Britain, conditions in the North Sea are more likely to help him than those in the English Channel. Professor Banse. for instance, in his plans for. the invasion of Britain, forecast a simultaneous attack in five columns, aimed at Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft. Harwich (and the vital mouth of the Stour), the Thames Estuary, and Dover, the goal being the formation of a front from the Ouse in the north to the Weald in the south. In Banse's eyes the reduction-of the industrial Midlands was even more important than ■ immediate land pressure on London. He wanted converging moves fronuihe Ouse front towards Birmingham and from. Dublin towards Liverpool and Manchester, with a subsidiary thrust from Belfast in the direction of Glasgow and the Scottish industrial centres.; His scheme did not count on the" ■prior occupation of Norway by Gerinany. obviously this opens,Up'va fruitful line of attack towards Edinburgh and NewcastleV'and increase&.the length- oi: coastline which' the British-'' mpst regard as a potential invasion•. 2Splw£si '.u .:i».i j-..': ■•'■-t ,, - l •'•'."-; ■. '.;■■, t■:.:•.&;■ *" ■ '••■'.' ' i'. 1 fcferiiian Training England'3 backbone, said -Banse, would be broken if the south-east were first occupied, and if subsequently an attack from- Ireland were-ito; be made. Whether wittmgly or,-]3y;-tiaz?u-d, Hitler, has closely followed ftnvfils;!. European campaigns the plans; of Banse; and there is every indication that in the last stage—the move against.southeastern England—this model will be similarly adopted. Much mention is already made of invasion by/ ; fleets of flat-bottomed boats. V Such a-reversion to the. Napoleonic technique; would be entirely in keeping with-German military ideas, for their'soldiers have always been trained in rthei methods of using such boats in the marsh countries of eastern and central Europe. Hindenburg's training schools in the Masurian Lakes have never been discontinued, and the present German Army is especially, strong in this matter of transport of troops by flat boats. But the North Sea. and even the Straits of Dover are very different from the marshes of East Prussia or Poland or Jugoslavia, for which this technique was devised, in the first place; and Hitler would have to cope with a British Navy and Air Force, specially concentrated on the duty of thwarting such a system of invasion. Flat-bottomed boats may conceivably do much to neutralise the minefields which, protect England's eastern coast, but, to'do this.-they would have to be left entirely unprotected by larger. su£ face-craft of deeper draft, and would thus be " sitting targets " if caught. If the Germans should choose to rely, on overwhelming numbers of accompany-, ing aircraft, detection of their efforts by the British guardians would be correspondingly easier, and onoe again, troops crowded in shoals of awkward boats would be so much "live bait, with no means of defence. , ' A- Hazardous Enterprise Furthermore, an opposed landing is still one of th« most difficult of military exercises. Even in the unlikely event of a large surprise landing, our own recent experience in Norway, Belgium, and northern France proves that it is most difficult to maintain a restricted occupation under modern conditions in the face of a powerful enemy. This would particularly be the case in the present instance, because flat-bottomed boats provide no answer to the difficulty of transporting tanks, heavy artillery, and the other weighty, components of mechanised warfare In such a small, well-guarded area as eastern England-, surprise would be difficult, and maintenance of a landing still more so. It is more likely to be a Dunkirk 01 a Namsos than a Sedan for the Germans. As long as the British Navy is afloat, and as long as the R.A.F. functions, anv landing in such narrow waters would be one of the wildest military h-i-'ards aDrji altogether from the British land defences. These latter are not negligible, because Britain now has more men under arms on her home soil than- ; af.any previous period m history-;: .-On theotbeitvband .the danger involved'would hot, rule put the. pro- : iect for .such va -reckless, gambler 'as Hitler, - and the'-menace remains acute although neither- so immediate nor so grave as the.danger: of an entirely untrammelled blitzkrieg in the air: It is in the : wake of such a concentrated bombing blitzkrieg that the land invasion is .likely to be most threatening