Operation "Sea Lion"

[al Roumi]

The Luftwaffe could not kill the RAF, because it was out of range. However, as long as the fighters of the RAF were still there, the Luftwaffe would not have been able to screen the bridgeheads and the flanks of the Channel. The RAF would have been able to attack the German convoys as well as the Royal Navy. Both would have suffered casualties, but the Germans would hardly be able to get enough supply to the islands. So, in the end, Germany would have lost the invasion troops.

I may be falling prey to pop history, but i thought the switch (at Hitler's command, and in retaliation to a single British raid on Berlin) to bombing cities rather than the first focus of the 'Battle of Britain', which had been destroying the RAF, came with maybe a week before the RAF would have been beaten? That was by the RAF's own estimation too i thought...

So, if the the Luftwaffe had been close to effectivley destroying the RAF's capability to defend itself, then presumably we could consider that the Luftwaffe could have destroyed it, had Hitler chosen not to.

With no air cover the Royal Navy would have been under severe pressure itself, and it's defense of the channel much harder alone.

Personaly, I think it would have been possible for an invasion to succeed, but the effort and losses in achieving the objective must have out-weighed the gains in Hitler or the German high command's view. The USSR's vast tracts of territory, resources and population offered a much greater incentive of future and immediate rewards than Britain presumably did.

Whether that was a strategic miscalculation of threats or not remains to be seen, Pearl Harbour had yet to "happen" and hence the US' engagement in the war was not, by any means, yet decided. If Germany had invaded Britain and maintained even a partial occupation (with supply) before Pearl Harbour, by the time the US joined things would have been very different.

D-day would have been pushed back for sure (assuming Britain and the US beat back the Germans from the UK), god knows what would have happened in the Maghreb and we might even have seen nukes deployed on Germany...