Schenk "Invasion of England 1940" pp 168-169
Rotterdam 49 transports and 308 barges listed from 24/9 to 2/10 when the barge total drops to 300.
Antwerp Transports listed at 48 and 300 barges from 24/9 to 7/10
Ostend lists
196 barges and no transports on 12/9 and 89 barges plus 13 transports on 14/9. When did the air attacks happen? 16th through 24th sept they list 89-76 barges and 15 transports.
Nieuport lists 24 transports through out Sept
Dunkirk lists 127 barges on 12 th building to 136 on 16th through 19th and 163 from the 24-28 reaching 201 on 2nd Oct 1940.
Gravelines lists 39-40 barges from 16th through into Oct 1940
Calais lists 138 on 12th 157 on 14th 163 on 16th and 202-204 from 17-19th Sept. On 24th through early Oct they list 214-217 barges.
Boulogne lists 88 barges on the 12th ; 111 on the 14th ; 146 on the 16th and 236 on the 17-19th Sept.That increases from 245 to 260 through early Oct.
Le Havre had 34 transports on the 14th and reached 47 from 16th Sept through mid Oct.
Their barge fleet swell from 52 on 14th Sept to 130 on 17th Sept and 169 to 200 from the 19th Sept to 28th Sept.
So if we crunch the numbers down we have on the 19th Sept roughly 885 barges and by the 24th we have 1549. 1580 barges on the 28th Sept. The assembly plan was to include 1939 Barges when completed , although 300 of these were in reserve.
On the transport capacity of the barges 40 tons was expected per load. In one exercise a transport was unloaded to the beach through 26 barge sortie unloading the following in 14 hours....860 troops ; 360 horses and bicycles ; 144 vehicles & 8 Pak/infantry guns plus 200 tons supplies [although it was realized that enemy action and rough weather could increase this to 2 days]. Schenk pp 94.
It seems the plan was to ferry the barges over being towed by trawlers tugs and the transport ships then leave ~ 400 on each side of the channel to speed up loading and unloading. After the first wave it was only expected that something like 700-800 barges were needed per wave.
With regards to seakeeping Schenk writes.[pp 156]
After rejecting 140 out of 245 barges
"After discussions and consultation with Kapitan zur See Kiederlen and Oberbaurat Driesen from the Design Bureau in which it was agreed to reduce the length to depth ratio of the barges (12-15:1 for ocean going barges as opposed to 25-31:1 for inland ones), thereby improving their seakeeping qualities.However , there were still insufficent barges with a ratio of 19.5:1 or less, and the figure was only lowered to 22:1 for craft in good condition."
If you down load the Springsharp program and fiddle around with building or comparing ships to performance its clear that ship length and beam as well as draft have as much of a baring on seakeeping as freeboard does. Looking at the scale drawing the barges slope from front to back so their is no one freeboard height.
In other areas he notes 2318 barges were converted of these 1336 of the Flemish designed Peniche barges [38.5 x 5.05 x 2.3m cargo capacity 360 tonnes] refered to as Type A1 and 982 of the larger Kempenaar or Type A2 barges [50 x 6.6 x 2.5m , cargo capacity of 620 tonnes]. 860 barges came from Germany 1200 from Netherlands and Belgium and 350 from the Seine region. Approximately 800 of the requistioned barges were motorised. [pp 67].
The biggest problem they had next to motorising the barges was the external ramp. By the fall they had reasonably workable 'ramp tracks' but these had to be manually deployed, so alot of subsquent work went into designing an retractable powered ramp through 1941. To ease this transition the leading waves were to dispatch combat teams through stormboats unloading from the tugs ahead of the beaching to secure the beach.
The first wave was to be done in stages with units landing over a two day period. Each front line infantry division was heavily reinforced with engineers tanks and artillery to help repell enemy counterattacks.
