Reversing the Royal Navy's 1940 nightmare

British prewar plans expected French territory, armies, air power, and naval strength to remain active even if metropolitan fighting went badly. The fall of Norway already shocked assumptions about control of the northern flank. France's collapse and the subsequent loss of the French fleet then imposed Force H and a worldwide shortage of British ships that planners had not treated as a normal worst case. Preserving either the fleet or France itself therefore changes not one campaign but the entire distribution of Allied risk and force.