Word: dover
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Thirty-one years ago this week, on July 25, 1909, a speck low in the air over the English Channel approached the Dover chalk cliffs from the French shore. Larger & larger it grew until watchers on the British side could clearly distinguish a man steering a gimcrack monoplane. He landed safely, and the British rushed to join the world in congratulating Aeronaut Louis Bleriot upon passing one of aviation's epochal milestones...
...Said the Manchester Guardian complacently: "It is almost certain that there are not 50 large transports in the Scheldt at present. . . . The slow-moving barges [from the Rhine] would take from 24 to 46 hours to make the crossing from Antwerp to Dover or to Hull, and as there would be hundreds of them they could hardly hope to escape detection. . . . They would cover so much sea area that our outpost vessels must run into them." The Guardian took comfort in the belief that the harbors at Boulogne, Calais, Zeebrugge and the Hook of Holland are so clogged with...
...miles of water between Calais and the chalk cliffs of Dover justly retained its reputation as an unpassable rampart so long as Britain remained mistress of the seas. It would still be so in 1940 had not Britain in the last seven years allowed herself to become blinded to the fact that to have the world's greatest navy is no longer to be secure...
...region of greatest danger was the area opposite the narrow Strait of Dover, which German guns and air power seemingly made impassable for all but the lighter units of the British Navy. With only these light vessels to oppose them, this region obviously became the most tempting for a German landing...
Winston Churchill recently estimated that it would take 200 to 250 vessels to land five divisions, and such large convoys would also invite fleet attacks at sea. But if large units of the British Fleet attempt to operate in the narrow waters near Dover they would be exposed to heavy German air, U-boat and artillery attack, and would probably suffer losses...