Battle of Britain - 80yrs Ago This Summer - Discussion Thread

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To play devils advocate. No one had fought this type of war before, by the time aircraft had been used in WW1 it was already a trench war stalemate. France was a stronger land power than UK so after the fall of Poland, Norway France and Belgium including the British evacuation of Dunkerque many Germans had cause to think that they only had to knock on the door and the UK would surrender.
 
buffnut453 said:
My point, though, is that you don't need to know how a system operates in order to disrupt that system.
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The issue here is that the Luftwaffe had limited resources. It's scatter gun approach was never going to work. If it could have accurately applied its limited resources to the vital parts of the UK system, and it had to know what they were to do this, things would have been very different. Sebastien Cox made the argument very well, when he said of the Luftwaffe

"It should have been used, first, to destroy the Chain Home radar towers, a simple task because only nine, all flimsy and highly conspicuous, guarded the coast between Southampton and Dover. The blinded RAF fighter airfields should then have been overwhelmed by round-the-clock bombing. And finally, if the British still showed resistance, their naked cities should have been deluged with high explosives and incendiaries."


Exactly, but having some idea about British defences and other capabilities might have helped to develop some kind of coherent plan. The Luftwaffe didn't even act on the knowledge that it did have.
 
Actually, you only need to replace the monitor, which is pretty easy, as it is a quite "independent" and external device, where you can easily instal a replacement, that is extremly likely to be compatible. Compare for example having to replace the CPU or Motherboard, lots of screwing around there, and you can destroy them with your fingernails.

What I mean to say by this, you provide a good example of the advantage of knowing the system you intend to detroy or at least distrupt. If you know little you are liable to focus on the big, obvious parts, that may actually be comparatively tough to destroy, yet easy to replace. Conversely, if you know what is going on with and within the hostile system, you can probably land some far more dangerous blows with far fewer expenses. The example I am thinking of right now is bombing German factories versus bombing German marshalling yards (read the book "The Collapse of the German War Economy 1944-1945" by Mierzejeski ).
 

Replacing the monitor is easy if you have one to spare. If you have to buy a new monitor, then your computer is worthless that entire time. Applied to the Chain Home system, if multiple RDF installations were rendered inoperable, it would take time to reconstitute them...and the entire time they're being reconstituted, they aren't a useful part of the UK's defensive system.

I'm simply pointing out that, even without knowing every aspect of the UK air defence system, consistent targeting to destroy or degrade multiple RDF sites would have greatly hurt 11 Group's operations because they wouldn't have had sufficient warning to respond. Clearly, the Luftwaffe would have to keep watch for the RDF sites being reconstituted so that, if necessary, they could be attacked again.

Anything that degrades RDF coverage will help the Luftwaffe achieve its objectives. It was a vital precursor to future successful operations but, thankfully, Goering and others blithely ignored it.
 

According to "Ultra Goes to War" by Ronald Lewin, Dowding had a teleprinter link from Bletchley Park to his headquarters at RAF Bentley Priory for Ultra reports. Ultra intelligence kept him informed of German strategy, and of the strength and location of various Luftwaffe units, and often provided advance warning of bombing raids but not of their specific targets. Signals intelligence also played a role in providing advanced warning of German raids because the radio checks and R/T traffic necessary for formations to form up over France could be detected.

In short, the RAF knew roughly when Luftwaffe raids were forming up and Dowding had some idea of overall strengths and strategy. However, neither of these facts would help Fighter Command know where to put the Hurricanes and Spitfires in order to intercept a raid.

Fighter Command without RDF and the C3 infrastructure would have been like turning the clock back to the aerial exercises of the early/mid 1930s. Part of the myth of "the bomber will always get through" resulted from exercises where it was found that defending fighters had a really hard time intercepting attacking bombers even when the actual target was known. The sky is a very big place and it doesn't take much difference in timing, altitude or position to render an attacking force invisible to the defending fighters. Often, the only way around the problem was to mount standing patrols but that's very costly in airframes and maintenance. It takes at least a squadron's worth of aircraft to maintain just 3 defending fighters over a relatively close target: 3 aircraft on station, 3 heading out to relieve them, 3 heading back to base and 3 being refuelled and re-armed. The longer the distance from the airfield to the target that needs to be defended, the more aircraft are needed to maintain the force.
 

That's a great quote by Cox which is, essentially, the scenario I'm suggesting might have resulted in Britain suing for peace (which is not the same as surrendering). As we've both observed, Goering and other senior German leaders seemingly assumed that Britain would just fold. When confronted with contradictory information, rather than re-evaluating their assumptions, they found excuses for why the new information didn't conform with their perceptions. Then again, in an environment where bad news often results in the messenger getting shot, I can understand why middle-grade officers were reluctant to tell truth to power.


stona said:
Exactly, but having some idea about British defences and other capabilities might have helped to develop some kind of coherent plan. The Luftwaffe didn't even act on the knowledge that it did have.
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Entirely agree. As we've both pointed out, Goering and others seemed to think that the UK would just roll over. They made assumptions on RAF capabilities and then reinforced those assumptions by ignoring anything that contradicted them (often shooting the messenger into the bargain).
 
Some points

Kesselring was always a optimist, often overoptimistic, e.g. in Italy 1943/44 at least some of his corps commanders got rather worried because they saw that "Smiling-Albert"'s optimistic views of the situations would led to hasty improvisations when reality sunk in. Sperrle's views during summer 40 were more realistic, he was against shifting attacks from fighter airfield to London because he had more realistic view on pilots claims and overall situation and though that time was not yet ripe to concentrate London.

On radar, CH radar towers were not so easy targets, lattice towers took blasts rather well. British also had some semi-mobile radar stations to be used to replace badly damaged HC stations and there were CHL radars, which at least should be able to cover holes created by knocked out CH radars.

IMHO the bottle-neck for the LW was not bombers but combat-ready fighter pilots. Late during the BoB the limiting factor for the LW was the number of 109 escorts and the LW had then more 109s than combat ready pilots for them.
 
Chain Home stations could be bombed off air and were. The Luftwaffe never persisted with a campaign against them.The sites had to be bombed again and again. It could have been done. It wasn't because the Germans under estimated their importance, under estimated the damage they did do and had dozens of other targets requiring attention.
 
It is the obvious thing to do, but the LW tried it and it didn't work as far as they tried it. On the 18 August 109 Ju87s attacked RADAR and airfield targets and 15 were lost. That brought JU87 losses to 59 lost and 33 damaged. The RADAR station (Poling) attacked was severely damaged and the Chain Home RADAR was out of action until the end of August, but the Chain Home Low system wasn't and that reached out around 70 miles, around the coast there were another 6 stations providing cover. Chain Home had a range of about 100 miles and covered an angular field of about 100 degrees looking out to sea, you have to take out a lot of stations completely to punch a hole in the system. Emergency portable set ups were available that had a range of about 70 miles. Dowding Tizard and many others had spent a lot of time constructing the Chain Home system it had massive redundancy built into it because it was an obvious target. The 18th August was the LW doing what you advocate and (from Wiki) this is what historian Alfred Price had to say about it "The laurels for the day's action went to the defenders. The aim of the Luftwaffe was to wear down the Fighter Command without suffering excessive losses in the process, and in this it had failed. It cost the attackers five aircrew killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, for each British pilot casualty. In terms of aircraft, it had cost the Luftwaffe five bombers and fighters for every three Spitfires and Hurricanes destroyed in the air or on the ground. If the battle continued at this rate the Luftwaffe would wreck Fighter Command, but it would come close to wrecking itself in the process." look at those loss rates in terms of what Stona posted about the LW needing to score at a 1:5 ratio to win.

In any case (and to queer the pitch further) Kesselring stated after the war (as per Stona's post) the problem was getting the RAF to fight, attacking airfields resulted in the destruction of Fairey Albacores and Swordfish, Miles Magisters, Avro Ansons and Blackburn Sharks whatever they are. It is possible to think about a strategy that weakened the CH system but never to the point that the UK was utterly devoid of any RADAR warning at all. As it was the LW attempts to destroy it resulted in unacceptable losses. If they had made a determined and set out obvious strategy to preferentially attack CH they would be playing into Park's hands, a set piece pitched battle with known enemy objectives was what he wanted. The LWs confused way of approaching their task was as baffling to Park as it is to us reading about it decades later.

The lack of good intelligence on the German side was not an accident, again from wiki but it was a fact that throughout the war the British made a point of opposing recon flights over UK, just as they made a point of performing recon themselves, every channel port was photographed by the RAF on the 18th August. "Only 403 (45 percent) of the total number of sorties flown by Fighter Command were directed at the three major German raids. A further 56 (or just over 6 per cent) were standing patrols to protect shipping off the coast. Most of the remaining 427 sorties (nearly 50 per cent) were made to engage the reconnaissance aircraft. Usually several half-squadrons were committed. This was not excessive. But by sending more units to counter the flights, German aircraft were forced to fly higher and were denied the opportunity to drop to low altitude to take higher resolution photographs. This contributed to a lack of German intelligence which often failed to distinguish fighter, bomber and naval airfields from each other. Much of the time their strength was directed at non-fighter airfields on this date."
 

Yes, Germans did not understand British integrated air defence system, but they tried to knock out CH radars on the eve of their main offensive, IIRC 12 Aug 40, but the results were not what they had thought, IIRC their ELINT did not notice any holes in the British radar coverage after the attacks and decided that the attacks were not worth of the effort. And as pbehn and I wrote, British had for back up semi mobile sets, that could be rigged up to cover any holes produced by knocked out CH radar(s). And then there were the CHL radars.
According to Radar in WW II compiled by Larry Belmont
The performance of C.H.L. can be seen from the following data from 1940:
Aircraft Height Detection Range
500 feet ________ 25 - 30 miles
1,000 feet ______ 40 miles
2,000 feet ______ 50 miles
4,000 feet ______ 55 - 60 miles
15,000 feet ____107 miles
 

Which is why you have to make persistent attacks on the sites. The idea that the system could not be disrupted is not supported by the facts.

On 12 August the CHL station at Pevensey was bombed off air, followed by those at Rye and Pevensey. Of course, the British took measures to restore coverage, but in the meantime Lympne and the Hawkinge were damaged by undetected raids. Later CH Ventnor was attacked and badly damaged. It was off air until 15 August and then only partially restored.

On 15 August, after the Luftwaffe had erroneously decided that attacks on radar were unprofitable just one 'Stuka' Gruppe, who obviously did not get the memo in time, put CHL Foreness and CHs Dover and Rye off air for the entire day. This led directly to the well known incident in which No 54 Squadron was caught on the ground at Manston by Bf 110s of ZG 76, and is an indication of what might have been.

On 16 August radar targets were still included in some orders. The CH station at Ventnor was bombed again and this time it remained off air until 25 September. It was the only station successfully attacked more than once and it too is an indication of what might have been. It is often ignored that at almost all the station sites the ancillary equipment was housed in little more than sheds above ground. The electrical power supply was also vulnerable. At Ventnor every single one of these buildings was destroyed or damaged in the raids.

Subsequently, the Luftwaffe gave up on radar, but the results of those few raids, over five days, had they been understood by the Germans, might have encouraged them to adopt the sort of campaign advocated by Sebastien Cox, and myself.
 

There was an element of self delusion to the German plan, and those earlier successes can only have supported that. At the most basic level, for every one of Kesselring's 'Galland, Molders, Oesau, Balthasar etc.' Fighter Command had an Eric Lock, James Lacey, Archie McKellar, Josef Frantisek, Colin Gray etc.
 

Yes, I knew that. But one must remember, that British had the first effective integrated air defence system in the world. Germans knew radar and had their own ones and they identified CH stations, even if it worked different system and waveband than theirs and looked very different. I'm not aware how many CHL stations they had identified, should have been easier to find because they worked nearly same waveband than German ones and looked much more like their radars with turning antennas but on the other hand they were much smaller than CH radars. So they had identified their "known enemies" but not the "unknown one" namely the integrated air defence system. But it is always easier to find known enemies than unknown ones. For British it took time to identify German radio beams (Knickebein, X- and Y-Gerät), even with Oslo Report and ULTRA and Y-Service. So we know much more than the top officers on either side in August 1940, but is it reasonable to expect that those top officers should have guessed all what we now know based on what they knew then? Germans tried to knock out British radars but their ELINT did not notice the gaps the attacks created. IMHO it was not so strange that they thought that radar stations were harder targets than they had thought and because they did not understand British system, also not so strange, they stopped trying what seems unprofitable attacks. One must remember that the attack which knocked CH Ventnor down cost to KG 51 its Kommodore, KG 51 lost on that day 10 Ju 88As but IIRC mostly during the main attack on Portsmouth delivered at same time as the Kommodore led a smaller force against Ventnor. I admit that generally the LW was less stubborn that the RAF when it came to bombing campaigns, they easier thought that damn, this is not working lets try something else.
 
My issue here is that we taking cause and effect.

Germany HAS to invade.
Germany HAS to park tanks on the Buckingham Palace lawn.

No invasion and no tanks then no win.

You can destroy every radar and Spitfires all day long. You can then turn Kent into a moonscape. But if the British keep fighting then it doesn't matter.

British bad weather and the onset of Winter means any invasion would have to wait until May 1941.

The Kriegsmarine couldn't invade UK in 1940 by any logical standard.

So realistically it was bombing and reducing the British will to fight.

You don't win wars by shooting down a Spitfire in a dogfight.

Unless you have German troops marching down Whitehall then and only then is the war lost.

The weather outside is piddling down and it's a British Summer! The weather alone could have defeated any invasion.
 
The 16th saw yet another massacre of StG2's Ju 87s, following it and StG1's losses the previous day. KG 55 and its He 111s got roughed up, and ZG 2 and ZG 76 lost Bf 110s, following ErpGr 210's bad losses the previous day (Croydon).

The Luftwaffe lost a lot of aircraft this day, but I can't find 10 Ju 88s. As far as I can see KG 55 only had 1 Ju 88 damaged after a mechanical failure.
 

Hello Stona
look on 12 Aug
 

The eventual objective was to defeat Fighter Command and achieve air superiority over the Channel and S E England. I believe that was impossible, given the constraints under which the Luftwaffe was operating. That's not the point though. Suppose that the Luftwaffe, by dint of superior intelligence and a better planned and executed campaign had achieved this objective, which I am not alone in believing to be theoretically possible; what then? It was the Luftwaffe's failure which was directly cited by Raeder to Hitler as the primary reason NOT to launch Sealion. If the Luftwaffe had succeeded, then the KM would either have had to find another excuse, or Sealion would have gone ahead, with, I suspect, disastrous consequences for the Germans. In a way, the Luftwaffe's failure may have saved the Germans from a greater disaster and loss of face.
 
My own rather uninformed view is that even if the LW had managed to punch significant holes in the CH system and begin abusing Spitfires at say 3:1 I still think invasion impossible. For one thing, production of new Spits and Hurricanes, it would seem to me that it would take quite a while to whittle down the RAF at the rate they were going. The Germans just weren't producing planes/pilot replacements fast enough.

I see the point made for having Britain sue for peace because the aerial campaign may be damaging cities/airfields, but I can't see that would be enough for the U.K. to just give up, as Basket said, parking tanks in Whitehall was the only way and even then the Brits probably wouldn't toe the mark.

But no matter what, I think the real arbiter of who get's to invade who in 1940/41 wasn't the LW or the RAF.
 
Peter Gunn said:
My own rather uninformed view is that even if the LW had managed to punch significant holes in the CH system and begin abusing Spitfires at say 3:1 I still think invasion impossible.
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The Luftwaffe had to do it at about 5:1, which was very optimistic.

Aircraft production was not the defining factor for the British. It was pilot replacement, and not just young men coming off the shortened training courses and from the OTUs. The critical shortage that the British faced historically, even at the level of losses they sustained, was of combat ready, operational, pilots. The often quoted figure showing that Fighter Command had 200 or so more pilots at the end of the Battle than the beginning ignores that about one third of the total (more than 300) were not operational.

If the Luftwaffe was actually inflicting the damage its own pilots claimed, then it would have won the Battle, but of course it wasn't.
 
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