Operation Sea Lion (German: Unternehmen Seelöwe) was Nazi Germany's plan to invade the United Kingdom during the Second World War following the Fall of France. To have had any chance of success, however, the operation would have required air and naval supremacy over the English Channel - neither of which the Germans ever had at any stage during the Battle of Britain. Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely on 17 September 1940 and never carried out.
Read more about Operation Sea Lion: Background, Navy, Broad Versus Narrow Front, German Coastal Guns, Cancellation, Chances of Success, In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words operation, sea and/or lion:
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“They call them the haunted shores, these stretches of Devonshire and Cornwall and Ireland which rear up against the westward ocean. Mists gather here, and sea fog, and eerie stories. That’s not because there are more ghosts here than in other places, mind you. It’s just that people who live hereabouts are strangely aware of them.”
—Dodie Smith, and Lewis Allen. Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland)
“The lion cares less about being king of the beasts than about finding his dinner.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)