7. THE ALLIES RULED THE WAVES
Fundamentally, Allied sea power ensured Nazi Germany’s defeat. During the dark days of 1940 and 1941, Allied warships and other craft saved a succession of armies from certain destruction, evacuating them first from Norway, then famously from France via Dunkirk, and finally from Greece and Crete, despite relentless enemy attempts to prevent them. After France fell, it was the Royal Navy that saved Great Britain from invasion.
Warships protected convoys of merchant ships, carrying vital supplies from the United States, Canada and worldwide, in the face of determined Axis attempts to interdict them. This kept first Britain and then the Soviet Union in the fight. After the US entered the war in December 1941, sea power guaranteed the build-up of the overwhelming American military and air power required to take the fight back onto the continent.
Sea power kept British Commonwealth armies fighting in north Africa, despite devastating enemy attacks in the Mediterranean and perilously long supply routes around the Cape of Good Hope. Later, it gave the Allies the flexibility to move armies around the world, seizing the initiative and hitting their enemies where they were most vulnerable, from Madagascar, Morocco and Algeria to Sicily and southern Italy. For the western Allies, the Second World War was largely a naval war, fought with expeditionary armies.
Finally, it was overwhelming Allied sea power – a staggering 7,000 ships and vessels of all sizes – that put a vast Allied army ashore in Normandy on 6 June 1944, reinforced it with thousands of troops and vehicles every day, sustained it with food, petrol and ammunition, and provided everything it needed, from floating artillery support to workshops and headquarters.
D-Day forced Nazi Germany into a two-front war it could never win. It was the final, decisive triumph of Allied sea power, and brought the war in Europe to an end.
An overwhelming 7,000 vessels put a vast Allied army ashore in Normandy