British rearmament during the Operation Sea Lion

When Operation Sea Lion began, the British army appeared to be an easy target for the German military, but it wasn’t.

Aware of the German preparation to invade, the British start to plan a defense strategy with the limited resources they had, because even thought a large number of men were available, the British Army’s heavy equipment had been lost during the Dunkirk Evacuation. They obviously needed to invest some millions if they were going to defeat Germany.

The Commander in Chief, General Sir Edmund Ironside, was responsible of the island’s defense, but he was lacking sufficient mobile forces and had to construct a system of static defensive lines around southern Britain, in a classic example of defense in depth.

The main intention was to protect London and the industrial heartland of England of the German attacks, so another the Taunton Stop Line was set up to serve as defense against the advance from England’s south-west peninsula.

Near the end, about 50 major stop lines were constructed.

In June 1940 the British Army had 22 infantry divisions, which were at almost half strength, had only one-sixth of their normal artillery and were lacking almost full transport. Plus, they had only one armored division.

The estimate number of tanks Britain own after the fall of France was, according to Churchill, of about 102 cruiser tanks, 132 infantry tanks and 252 light tanks, so we can see that they were not as disarmed as the Germans foolishly thought they were.

By the six of June, 1940, the British Army had gathered field artillery enough for 15 divisions, medium artillery enough for 10 divisions and heavy artillery to fill 12 divisions. As for tanks they had 141 cruiser tanks, 140 infantry tanks and 407 light tanks. They were more than ready to defend Britain from the Germans.

Plus, they had 1.15 millions of rifles, 14,023 Bren guns and 6,676 boys AT, enough to arm the whole Royal Army.

Finally by August 31, the infantry was 274; they had about 3765 tanks, including the cruiser ones.

Germany was defeated because they expected a weak Britain, easy to take over, but they gave the British too much time to rearm themselves.

By: Analucia Castagnino