Healzdevo i get your point but also consider this:
During the so called "Dieppe Raids", even with what i assume was a British "naval supremacy", and the support of a signficant RAF force, the landed allied forces were annihilated and slaughtered, and also the RAF received a brutal battering at the hands of JG 2 and JG 26.
I think the naval capabilities of Great Britain during 1940 are greatly overstated; do not forget that all that naval might could not prevent the Germans for succesfully landing forces in Norway, even if they managed to inflict signifcat losses to the Germany navy.
The naval supremacy of the allies during Overlord is to a very important extent a U.S. Navy contribution.
If we take a closer look into 1940 the Royal Navy was already taking a hell of a beating, during the first half of the year 1 battleship and 2 important carriers, 3 armed merchant cruiser, 2 cruisers plus a high number of destroyers had been sunk by the Kriegsmarine or Luftwaffe...in less than one year.
Also during 1940 the RAF was by no means capable of conducting any offensive action against any enemy fleet assembled; not to mention the state of the British army in the islands after getting smashed in France.
If the Germans had seriously planned to invade and conquer England, i am sure they could have done it, succesfully that is. The thing is they did not really saw England as the target and there were no serious plans at all.
Udet
Your comments although acurate in detail don't give the correct impression.
Dieppe
The largest ship involved in Dieppe was a Hunt class small destroyer and the one thing that was noticable was that no German warship came anywhere near the ships offshore. To imply from this that the RN was incapable of undertaking offensive operations in the North Sea is a million miles from the truth. The raid using the smallest ships in the RN was an offensive operation and the one force that couldn't defend German Territory, was the German Navy.
The army were slaughtered on the beaches but that says more about the efficency of the German Army and bad planning on the part of the British than anything else.
The German airforce did well but then they they should have done with all the advantages they had. Being on the defensive, with better aircraft and under radar control they should have done. Despite this it wasn't as one way as people believe. It should also be noted that the German airforce didn't have any significant effect on the naval forces involved.
Norway
The German bases were a lot closer than the British bases including the vital airbases, plus Norway was Neutral and threatened to defend itself against any foreign forces British or German. So its not suprising the Germany landed first.
Desipite all these advantages, including having total control of the skies Germany lost a huge proportion of its Navy including significant damage to its capital ships, neither did it stop the British from driving the Germans out from some of the invasion sites and landing its own forces. If the British had been within range of aircover there is an excellent chance that the Germans would have been beaten facing huge losses in men and morale. It was airpower and the distance from the airbases that made the difference, not the German Army or Navy.
Naval losses in 1940
The key losses were the aircraft carriers as these were almost irriplacable and were the best conversions that we had. Their impact however was limited by the fact that we didn't have any decent aircraft at the time. The important thing was that the RN could afford these losses. We had a number of other battleships and literally dozens of cruisers and scores of destroyers.
If you look at the British and German losses in 1940 as a proportion of the active fleets there is no doubt who was slaughtered and it wasn't the British.
