The British and French forces trapped in the Dunkirk area were crying out for naval support in their hearts, but the British and French navies did not dare to send capital ships to the English Channel at this time.

Needless to say, there is only one vote left in the hands of the Royal Navy, which is an old antique imported from the United States. As for the French navy, although they also have six or seven dreadnoughts, the French also have to take into account the problem of sea supremacy in the Mediterranean, most of the capital ships are now in the Mediterranean to suppress the Italian navy that is about to move, and only two Dunkirk-class battleships are stationed in the Atlantic, one of which is anchored in British ports.

Although he was very reluctant in his heart, but the stingy French, when the British Navy was almost completely destroyed and rebuilt, he was forced to be very stingy and sent two battleships from his small family to join the British Navy to help in the battle.

The Third Battle of the Norwegian Sea, the fall of the Royal Navy, has demonstrated how weak large warships can be under the attack of aviation.

The narrow English Channel is not a suitable battlefield for large warships. In addition to the threat of aviation, one other threat is small torpedo boats. Especially at night, when tens of thousands of tons of warships move here, they are even more frightened.

During the day on 18 July, the capital ships of Britain and France were reluctant to dispatch because of the air threat. In order to threaten the surface capital ships of Britain and France, the German navy launched the French campaign and also carried out a series of military operations in Guò, diverting part of the attention of the two navies to the direction of the Norwegian Sea.

In April 1940, the U.S. Navy made a high-profile "visit" to the United Kingdom, and on this occasion, a large number of British merchant ships arrived safely in the British Isles under the escort of the U.S. Navy. In this process, in order to avoid prematurely "misfire" with the United States, under Hannah's instructions, the German sea wolves, who had been frantically entering submarines in the Atlantic, mostly ended their safaris in April and returned to their home ports to receive maintenance and replenishment, with the consequence that the tonnage of the British seaborne cargo ships was even as low as 50,000 tons this month.

However, the consequence of the large number of German submarines returning to port in April for maintenance and replenishment was that more German submarines would enter the Atlantic in May to carry out a break-up operation.

At the outbreak of the French Campaign in May, in order to bring more British warships into the Atlantic and break away from the French battlefield, at the beginning of this month, a full seventy submarines poured into the Atlantic Ocean at the same time. The Germans deliberately leaked this information to the British, and one of the consequences of this was that a large number of destroyer fleets from the British mainland were dispatched into the Atlantic Ocean that month to carry out escort operations.

In addition to having more submarines than at the same time in history, the German Navy also had the advantage of occupying the French islands and getting an excellent parachute jump into the Atlantic. As a result, German submarines that had entered the Atlantic to carry out raids were given a front-line supply campaign closer to the Atlantic, which greatly increased the efficiency of their operations, and the consequence was that the British shipping was more threatened.

In addition, the German surface fleet has been operating in a high-profile manner between the Norwegian Sea and the North Sea since 10 May, attracting most of the remaining capital ships of the British and French navies to the northern part of the British Isles, near the Atlantic side, and it is impossible to reach Dunkirk in a short time.

Under the interference of many factors, on May 18, when the British Navy wanted to dispatch, it found that on this side of the channel, it could mobilize less than 10 destroyers to attack Dunkirk. (To be continued......)