Flow regimes of dry, stratified flow passing over an isolated two-dimensional (2-D) orography mainly concentrate at two stagnation points. One occurs on the upslope of the orography owing to flow blocking; another is related to gravity wave breaking (GWB) over the leeside. Smith (1979) put forward a hypothesis that the occurring of GWB is suppressed when the low-level vertical wind shear (VWS) exceeds some value. In the present study, a theoretical solution in a two-layer linear model of orographic flow with a VWS over a bellshaped 2-D orography is developed to investigate the effect of VWS on GWB's occurring over a range of surface Froude number Fr 0=U0/Nh (U0 is surface wind speed, h is orography height and N is stability parameter), over which the GWB occurs first and the upstream flow blocking is excluded. Based on previous simulations and experiments, the range of surface Froude number selected is 0.65Fr052.0. Based on this solution, the conditions of surface wind speed (U0) and one-to-one matching critical VWS (Duc) for GWB's occurring are discussed. Over the selected range of Fr0, GWB's occurring will be suppressed if the VWS (Du) is larger than Duc at given U0. Moreover, there is a maximum value of Duc over the selected range of Fr0, which is labelled as Dumax, and its matching surface wind speed by U0m. Once the Du is larger than Dumax, the flow will pass over the orography without GWB's occurring. That means, over the selected range of Fr0, the flow regime of 2-D orographic flow related to GWB occurring primarily will be absent when Du-Dumax, regardless of the value for U0. In addition, the vertical profile of atmospheric stability and height of VWS could result in different features of mountain wave, which leads to different Duc and Dumax for the GWB's occurring. The possible inaccuracy of estimated Duc in the present linear model is also discussed. © 2012 X.-W. Bao and Z.-M. Tan.