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Banse Plan. In an invasion the German Air Force would have the task of razing the naval bases at Harwich, Sheerness, Chatham, Ramsgate, Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, Cowes, Plymouth (see map, p. 18), Britain's Fleet air arm. Coastal Command of the Royal Air Force, and anti-aircraft batteries would have to protect Britain's naval bases as best they could. Last week's preliminary Nazi bombings in Essex and Yorkshire were possibly to test and spot these defenses. German coastal cannon planted at Calais, Cap Gris Nez. Boulogne might aid in trying to reduce the British bases. Britain's coastal batteries have long range but are old. Heavy units of the Royal Navy, scarcely daring to contest invading forces in the narrow straits area, would probably withdraw to stations up the west British coast or down the French coast at Le Havre Cherbourg, Brest. To light units, though vulnerable to air bombs, would fall a large part of the defensive work.
Allied sources estimated—possibly over-estimated—last week that Hitler has 20,000 parachutists in reserve for such an invasion, and 2,000 transport planes capable of ferrying almost one division per hour of regular infantry across the 130-mile median distance from the European to the British lowlands. But the full power of the invading troops—armored equipment and artillery—would have to go in surface transports. British mines threaten these, so before the parachutists take off Phase 2 of the German plan would be minesweeping. Several narrow channels through the minefields might be swept in one dark night. The Nazi minesweepers would be guarded by swift, shallow-draft motor torpedo boats. Light units of the British Fleet would face a test of vigilance and daring that night and the next dawn, when the transports and their German naval and air escorts set out on William the Conqueror's path.
As the waves of the ocean would be the waves of German bombers—heavy, light and dive—which would precede the sea ferries and air-troop transports. Professor Banse long ago recommended Norfolk-Suffolk as a base for the G. E. F. because "the Great Ouse, which flows into the Wash, and a number of streams flowing into the Blackwater estuary . . . make the peninsula into a regular island, which provides an invading army with safe and roomy quarters from which it can threaten London, which is quite close and without natural defenses on that side—and also the industrial Midlands."
Professor Banse concluded: "We confess that it gives us pleasure to meditate on the destruction that must sooner or later overtake this proud and seemingly invincible nation. . . . The above sentences would appear monstrous, nay rank blasphemy, to every Englishman and Englishwoman in the world—if they ever saw them."