TNA ADM 234 360

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ANALYSIS OF THE OPERATION
CHAP. XIII
England was sent to Dunkirk; until then messages had either to be sent through
the French station in an unsuitable code, or fortuitously via any destroyer
which might be lying alongside, necessitating a messenger forcing his way
along the narrow crowded footway of the pier.
In. the absence of efficient communication it was impossible to distribute
ships to the best advantage off the beaches or between Dunkirk harbour
and the beaches; whilst the uncertainty as to whether the harbour was blocked
on the 29th May was responsible for a reduction of 10,000 men in the possible
lift during the night 29th-30th.
Air Co-operation
There is no doubt that the R.A.F. carried out, as far as their available re-
sources permitted, all the tasks which they were asked by the Navy to under-
take. The odds at which our airmen fought were very long, four or five to one.
Formations of single squadron strength or less would boldly attack German
groups of forty or fifty machines, usually with success out of all proportion to
the odds against them. It was a direct test of British against German quality.
Numbers did not, however, permit of a continuous patrol being maintained
over the scene, though the whole Metropolitan Air Force, our last sacred reserve,
was used. Sometimes the fighter pilots made four sorties a day'.' Unfortun-
ately, the troops on the beaches and on Dunkirk piers saw but little of the
fighting in the air, for much of the weight of the effort of the Royal Air Force
was directed against objectives far inland, to prevent or break up enemy raids
before these reached the beaches and ships. It was the ships that took the
brunt of the German attack. Galling though it was to our troops to be
bombed and machine gunned with little or no opportunity to defend them-
selves their losses, grievous enough, were yet never of such severity as to
jeopardise the entire operation, as did the losses of ships. However, the
system of co-operation in force at that early date, which did not permit of
direct contact with R.A.F. operational units allocated for duty with the Naval
Command, rendered difficult complete co-ordination of effort with naval
requirements on the spot.
Evacuation figures analysed²
In analysing the evacuation figures it is necessary to consider separately
the rates of lift from day to day and the daily total figures of troops lifted.
The former naturally affected the latter ; but the days which showed the best
rates of lift were not necessarily those giving the highest evacuation total,
since circumstances affected the two sets of figures differently and factors
which affected one set often had no effect whatever on the other.
The following table shows the number of men from the beaches and the
harbour landed daily in England by British ships, and the number of round
trips undertaken. Evacuations of wounded by hospital carriers have been
omitted, as have also the liftings from the beaches on 3rd and 4th of June,
which were largely fortuitous.
1 Churchill, The Second World War Vol. II.
2 The figures employed in this analysis are those of H.S./T.S.D. The total differs by
397 (= 0.0013%) from the military figure. See Note to Tables 1-3 which will be found
before the appendices at the end of this book.
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