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The LW lost the BOB because they could never have won it. Their air force was not set up to win that type of campaign and Hitler and his generals and admirals except perhaps for Goering were never serious about invading England anyway and did not have the means in the Summer- Fall of 1940 to execute Sea Lion. The first directive to invade England was issued in mid July and all preparations were to be completed by mid August. ABSURD! The Anglo-American invasion of N Africa took over 9 months to prepare. Rightly so, the BOB was made into a great propaganda victory for Britain but the British Isles were never in any great danger. Having said that, the BF was not suited as an escort fighter because of short range and the British fighters held all the advantages of fighting over their own territory.
The German objective was to remove Britain from the war to allow them to concentrate on Russia. And Hitler was completely serious about this objective and people looking at the BoB as something that Germany was not serious about are forgetting, or unaware of the domestic situation in Britain at the time.
There is more than one way to skin a cat and, while it is true that the Invasion of Britain as envisaged by almost everyone would have been impossible to successfully mount (due mainly to the existance of the Royal Navy) the reality was that Lord Halifax was determined to make peace with Germany right from the fall of France and the ex-king Edward VIII was freindly with Hitler. What is not so well known is that there was a lot of support in Parliament for Halifax's position as most MP's were in agreement that Germany was unbeatable and our position was hopeless, Churchill was feeling very threatened at this time and his rousing speeches were aimed as much at his colleagues as they were at the general populace.
A German victory in the BoB would have resulted in Germany achieving its aims by them being INVITED into Great Britain with Lord Halifax as PM, Churchill having been overthrown in a bid to prevent the destruction of the British Empire - which Hitler wanted to preserve as a single entity - and the Royal family having fled to Canada to be replaced by the reinstated Edward VIII as monarch.
But before I get rambling on about this in too much detail (if I haven't already) the most important plane of the BoB is impossible to define. The key to success was the Spitfire, Hurricane AND radar. The first two wouldn't have mattered without the latter.
The Bf 109 could not have been the best aircraft of the battle because it was being employed in the wrong job, despite its technical excellence. If Germany had a P-51 to deploy things MAY have been a bit different.
The point which everyone, including kool kitty, seems to be missing in this - the idea that any possible invasion scenario of Britain in 1940 must fail, no matter what, rests of two assumptions:
(1) That the invasion HAD to be mostly or completely seaborne.
(2) That the Germans would be following the SAME BoB strategy and tactics in ALL possible scenarios.
As I (and many historians and generals and politicians, including Montgomery and Churchill) have pointed out, there were many other options available to the Luftwaffe and the Army.
What if the Luftwaffe Fighter arm had remained on the defensive in the BoB and stayed patrolling over the invasion ports, and allowed the invasion ports to slowly fill with invasion barges...the RAF would be forced to attck these ports, and with the home field advantage of both fighters and Flak, the Luftwaffe would have slaughtered the RAF bombers and fighters. (This did happen in the BoB on a smaller scale BTW).
German Bombers didn't have the payload to do this level of damage, and there wasn't enough of them. At the time we probably thought that they did, but it was proven many times during the war that this wasn't the case.And what if, simultaneously, the Luftwaffe had pounded using the once-by-day and many-times-by-night technique the East Coast Port Cities of Liverpool, Hull, etc etc,
Destroyers are not the key to A/S warfare so the fact that some of them were on anti invasion duties wouldn't have made much of a difference. Also if you concentrate the U Boats you allow the RN to concentrate their A/S forces. They would tend to balance each other out, plus far more aircraft would be available close to shore.while the German Navy sent out its U-boats (yes, there were few of them in the BoB period, but against that we have to counterbalance the fact that the convoy system was in its infancy, escorts were scarcer than hen's teeth, the entire Royal Navy carrier force COULD NOT SINK ANY GERMAN SUBMARINE EVEN WITH A DIRECT HIT ON THE PRESSURE HULL (see Roskill, the best authority on the subject) and most of the destroyers were concentrated near the channel to counter an invasion)and this went on for months?
There would have been catastrophic effects on British Armament Production, AND food supplies...and as many doctors can tell you, it is slow, steady starvation that is the greatest breaker of morale. That's how the Germans lost WW I.
Your comments would be appreciated by me...
Also what people don't realise is that Germany were in no condition to launch a landing. The Japanese who inspected the preparations were pretty scathing.Alas....I must, respectfully and humbly, disagree....
What most people don't realise is that England in 1940 was in an absolutely hopeless shape to resist an invasion.
Attack with what? Remember Germany had 10 destroyers in total in the Summer of 1940. No one invades anyone with 10 destroyers if and its a big if, they stayed undamaged in the build up.Whose opinion? Mine? No, the opinion of, among others, FIELD MARSHAL SIR BERNARD LAW MONTGOMERY. In his postwar writings he wrote that if the Germans had really mounted an attack, and assuming the luck of battle was evenly balanced between the two sides, England would have fallen as a coherent fighting unit within two to three months.
And how many Tanks would the Germans land? Remember Germany had no tank landing craft just some converted barges.At the time of the BoB England had -
No modern tanks in any numbers worth speaking of.
NO USEFUL ANTI TANK GUNS
The Convoys were introduced before Sept 1940 and the Ship repair organisation ie shipyards did exist.None of the marvellous system of convoy defence, ship repair, and efficient maritime administration that would grow up later in the war
Not quite, all the first 25pd's on the 18pd mounts had been lost but the 25pd was in full production and its probably the only modern piece of equipment that was in decent numbers. In 1940 about 1,100 guns were produced and 4million shells.NO MODERN FIELD ARTILLERY!!!! Nearly every single freaking 25 pounder had been lost in France!
As for the Generals, I am not inclined to take to much of what Montgomery says. He was well known for blowing his own trumpet and putting others down even if they didn't deserve it.A shortage of everything from boots to rifles...
Generals who didn't have a clue how to fight a bloody war (Monty is particulary scathing on this - he should know - he had to fire a dozen or so of them later in the war)
True but this tended to get worse as the war situation improved. Strange but true.Labour Unions WHO WERE STILL STRIKING IN THE MIDDLE OF A BLOODY WAR (believe it or not!)
IMHO if the luftwaffe, instead of bombing London, had bombed the port cities in combination with the U-boat sinkings (Churchill in his memoirs stated that this was the very combination he had nightmares about at the time) and after six months of this, had mounted an invasion, weak, unprepared Britian would have gone down from as little as five good german divisions.
OK...now let the debate and controversy begin!
ex-king Edward VIII was freindly with Hitler.
- and the Royal family having fled to Canada to be replaced by the reinstated Edward VIII as monarch.