In 1953, Lionel Ellis, the British official historian, wrote that by the end of the informal evacuations on 14 August, another had been evacuated after the rescue of in Operation Dynamo, a total of of whom British troops. In 2001, Brodhurst wrote that many civilians escaped from French Atlantic and Mediterranean ports to England via Gibraltar and that civilians left the Channel Islands from Brodhurst gave figures of troops and civilians evacuated. Although much equipment was lost, cycles. of ammunition, of stores, of petrol, and were recovered during Operation Aerial and the earlier evacuations. German submarines could have sunk British ships in the Bay of Biscay, many of the troopships being unescorted and out of range of England-based fighters but the seven in the area did not intervene. The "Luftwaffe" managed to sink "Lancastria" but German operations against Aerial showed a lack of co-ordination between the "Luftwaffe" and "Kriegsmarine". Brodhurst wrote that the success of the operation was due to the professionalism of the Royal Navy, the decisions of middle-ranking officers like Ramsay and the conduct of the navy and civilian crews, who took grave risks to rescue the army.