"We hoped that 25/00 to 30,000 good troops—I am making it a lie vague—with artillery and a proportion of tanks aided by Greek forces would be able to destroy parachute and glider landings of the enemy and prevent him using the airfields and harbours, Our army was to destroy the air borne attacks while the navy held off or destroyed seaborne attacks. But there was a time-limit. The action of the navy in maintaining a northern sea guard without adequate air defence was bound to be very costly. K is known how serious those losses were.
"We could orly stand a certain proportion of naval losses before the northern sea guard of the fleet would have to be withdrawn. If in the meanwhile the army could succeed in beating off the head of the whole terrific apparatus of the air borne invasion before the naval time-limit or loss limit was reached, then the enemy would have to begin all over again and, having regard to the enormous and unprecedented scale of the operation and the losses he would have incurred, he might well for the time being at least have broken it off—at any rate there would have been a long delay before he could have mounted it again.
"That was the basis on which the decision was taken.
"What would our critics have said
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