By Luck, or Design?

I reflect on how fortunate the RAF was to have trained Poles and Czechs to fill in for the lack of trained air crew and the fact they were able to focus all the aircrew on combat tasks rather then have skilled pilots training fledgling aircrew

pbfoot said:

I reflect on how fortunate the RAF was to have trained Poles and Czechs to fill in for the lack of trained air crew and the fact they were able to focus all the aircrew on combat tasks rather then have skilled pilots training fledgling aircrew

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And when I read your post, I reflect on how the 3rd Reich's behaviour and attitude towards their neighbouring countries made people queue up to deliver a bit of payback.

I can't help but think that in times of war, a lot of things happens science-wise.
People work together to come up with ideas, and - when pressed - they do tend to come up with a lot of good ones.
Yes there was probably also a lot of designs/ideas/plans that didn't amount to anything due to the fact that these designs/ideas/plans were simply put: Too far out.
But the difference in my eyes between a good scientist/leader and a great scientist/leader is - among other things - the ability to keep both feet on the ground, and evaluate what's possible/feasible and what isn't, and come up with ways to use whatever means they've got, in the best manner possible, in order to come out on top.
I think that has a lot to do with what's being debated here.

I like your thread, Waynos. And I agree about the circumstances that literally pulled Britain's arse from the fire. Had the Graf Zepplin been on freq and detected the radar, things could have been different. Had the Spitfire been looked over for a different aircraft, things would have turned out differently. The list is a long one.

There's been quite a few times that a "stroke of luck" swung an otherwise dire situation to the favor of the underdog. The battle of Midway could be one of those instances, or the decision that kept the obsolete "Stringbag" in service ultimately led to the sinking of the Bismark.

But the Battle of Britain had a string of events that each in thier own right were small, but combined tipped the balance in favor of England. I'll add to the list of contributions mentioned above, probably one of the greatest decisions made during the Battle of Britain, was the switch from bombing strategic targets, to bombing civilian targets by the Germans. I know this sounds terrible, but that decision came at a very dark hour for England when the people were beginning to have doubts. The attacks on civilians created a rallying point and steeled the resolve of the British people.

A huge error among many, by the German leadership.

Hello Waynos,

How unfortunate that Neville Chamberlain had to become the scapegoat for coming back from Munich with a piece of paper when his country was not prepared to enforce anything greater. How fortunate that the Nazis chose to build the Me 109 instead of the Heinkel 100. How fortunate that General Wever died before he could build a German Strategic Bomber Force. How silly were the Nazis to get upset at RAF bombers hitting civilian targets and switch to bombing civilian targets themselves. How silly were the Germans to believe during the phony war that the British were willing to negotiate. How silly were the Germans and Japanese to believe that they were in a very limited war that would end via negotiation. How fortunate that the Spitfire and Mustang interacted so well together to win the Battle of Britain. How fortunate that the Miles M20 was chosen for production instead of the obsolete Hawker Hurricane. How timely was the purchase of American P-40 Tomahawks that blended so well with Spitfires to defeat the Luftwaffe. How fortunate was it that even after the defeat of the RAF the Royal Navy was at great cost able to totally destroy the German Seelowe invasion force.

How brilliant was the British government to allow the massive overclaiming to continue for propaganda reasons when they could plainly count the number of Luftwaffe wrecks that fell from each battle.

The winning of the Battle of Britain by the underdog is a great story as it is typically told, but perhaps it wasn't as close a thing as described and perhaps some of the "critical" decisions weren't quite as critical as they have been made out to be. My personal belief is that Germany had no hope of beating Great Britain in a long war. Even during the Battle of Britain, the British were outproducing the Germans so that the British had more planes than they started with and the Germans did not. As for losses, it was pretty much an even swap if you include British bomber losses over the continent as well.

Just a little food for thought.
- Ivan.

Waynos said:

except that the usual policy was to select one type

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Hi Wayne. I've seen a couple of references refer to the purchase of both the Hurricane and the Spitfire as a result of a rearmament programme simply called "Plan F." Do you know who instigated this plan and why?

Oh, that surprised me, thanks guys.

Yes, we were indeed fortunate to get some excellent pilots from overseas to bolster the ranks. Whilst its true that they were in the minortity, the exploits of the East European pilots especially brought results out of proportion to their number. That is something we could not plan for.

Ivan, I'm not sure whether you were being entirely sarcastic or not, but you did raise some intriguing what if's amongst your points. Speaking of Chamberlain, we did mainly have him to thank for having the fighter command we did, complete with all its various elements as he steadfastly supported Dowdings wishes, in the face of the demands of the 'Bomber Mafia' which would have spent resources used on this elsewhere. As distasteful as many find 'Munich' today, and there is no question that Czekoslovakia was betrayed, it was the right thing for us to do at the time.

I agree largely with your own assessment of the BoB, and I am convinced that an armed invasion of the UK was never a realistic option. But defeat for the RAF was entirely possible, and such a defeat would have ended our war, but in a different way from the invasion of mythology, in my opinion.

Sometimes you can plan and build till you're blue in the face but things go wrong anyway. Thats something which I didn't put in previous posts. We were far from perfect and made many mistakes. Examples of this would be basically the entire complement of aircraft in Bomber Command (Wellington excepted) for one, and the ridiculous 'fighting area attacks' of fighter command itself for another.

Another 'lucky' thing for me, was in that those things which were wrong could be modified over time, as they were with new tactics and new bomber types etc. If the setup of fighter command and the equipment bought for it were wrong in 1940 there would have been nothing we could do about it, no time to make changes.

For an example of the way things might have gone wrong look at the pressure being brought to bear in 1939 to end production of the Spitfire and turn over Castle Bromwich and Supermarine themselves to building the Westland Whirlwind. Can anyone really argue that we were not very lucky indeed that this plan was vetoed?

Regarding plan F raised by Graeme, yes, that was crucial and I am trying to find out more about how it came about, as it was this document which bestowed on us the 'lucky' mix of fighters we would so depend on in 1940. This was the first time the RAF ever procured two new fighter types simultaneously for the same role, and how lucky for us that some bean counter didn't stop it.

I don't think mention of luck demeans the efforts of many great people, there is a saying that you make your own luck and, without the efforts made by the planners, politicians and industrialists we would not have been able to benefit from any kind of luck that came our way.

Waynos said:

Clearly you and I have both failed. I agree that the lack of input from other members seems to show that what I was trying to say has not come across a clearly as I would have hoped and I must take responsibility for this.

I had no idea that suggesting we had a slice of luck in our preparations for war would be so offensive or abhorrent to people or could in any way be seen a 'farcical'

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I don't think you have
I read the question with some interest, I was simply at a loss as to how to answer it, there was certainly nothing farcical about the question.

I think you are crediting the wrong people the People who ensured that you had a large fighter force were Ellington and Freeman and Newall and don't forget the foresight of Ludlow -Hewiit who had the foresight for the BCATP for without the BCATP you would have had an extreme pilot shortage , many of those flying combat pilots would have been used in the training enviroment. Those same folks also lacked foresight by not alllowing some Commonwealth countries the licence to build Spit's because it was beyond the "colonials" expertise

Hello
I'm not so great believer on pure luck even if I admit than sometimes it made big impacts. So only a couple comments.

On radar, both GB and Germans had radars. The point was that GB built an integrated air defence system which partly relied on radars. Germans were more interested in fire control systems and even if they had long range surveillance radars they didn't fully integrate them into their air surveillance systems. On the other hand Germans put more efforts on development of radio navigational aids and were well ahead on British in that field. It was not a question of luck but on priorities, British put more effort on defensive aids Germans offensive.

On switching from airfields to cities. Now also Kesselring thought that that was a good idea because he felt that it was the way to force the FC to fight and so gave LW the chance to destroy it. And that was one of the main aims of LW operation.

Juha

pbfoot said:

I think you are crediting the wrong people the People who ensured that you had a large fighter force were Ellington and Freeman and Newall and don't forget the foresight of Ludlow -Hewiit who had the foresight for the BCATP for without the BCATP you would have had an extreme pilot shortage , many of those flying combat pilots would have been used in the training enviroment. Those same folks also lacked foresight by not alllowing some Commonwealth countries the licence to build Spit's because it was beyond the "colonials" expertise

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Hi, I am wanting to reply but am mindful that I may be misreading your post (recent exchanges have maybe heightened my sensitivity in this area! )

Regarding having a large enough fighter force and a pilot training scheme capable of supporting the size of air force we were building, I have no disagreement with you, and this is a result of hards work and planning of course, I regard us as lucky in this regard only in the sense that the two fighters chosen (and the fact that it was two) were the perfect match.

I mentioned earlier in the thread Supermarine had no track record at all in producing service fighters, so the selection of the Spitfire, which looks like a no brainer in hindsight, was a very risky choice at the time and did almost prove disastrous due partly to the sloppy support they initially gave the shadow factories as well as their own internal problems. So great was the strain that the works manager shot himself. This was not a company in control of the situation. An inferior, but workable type might easily have been selected in preference, for 'practical' reasons and we would have entered the battle with, in effect, two Hurricanes. What that might have meant for the war can only be speculation of course but my feeling is that it would not have been good.

I'm not so great believer on pure luck even if I admit than sometimes it made big impacts. So only a couple comments.

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Hi Juha, thanks for joining in. I suppose it depends on what is meant by 'luck'. I think earlier contributors to the thread thought I was alluding to some sort of divine guidance or intervention. Nothing could be further from the truth, I am the least religious person I know I meant it quite simply as a matter of pure chance. When you stand a playing card on end, it could fall either way. My piece on us being lucky is mainly in relation to me looking at the right and wrong choices we made, and it just looked to me as though that when it mattered, the card fell the right way The Graf Zeppelin example being a good one.
All the wrong choices, it seems, were ones that we would have time to fix (witness also pb foots example of the commonwealth pilots) , whereas when it came to the ones that we would have been stuck with, like the defensive set up you described and the fighters we relied on, we got them right. I know those choices were all made by dedicated and brillian minds, but so were the wrong ones. To me that was lucky.

On switching from airfields to cities. Now also Kesselring thought that that was a good idea because he felt that it was the way to force the FC to fight and so gave LW the chance to destroy it. And that was one of the main aims of LW operation.

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I agree that was not the mistake many believe and I think itsd impact has been exaggerated. It was a sound tactic to draw up enemy fighters that was repeated by the RAF itself from the following year and later by the USAAF over Germany. Its just that it didn't work for the Luftwaffe for several reasons

Hello Waynos,

Everyone likes to read stories of David slaying Goliath, and the story of the Battle of Britain is usually told that way. I don't intend to disparage anyone's accomplishments in the war, but perhaps the "Story" has grown into much more than history would justify. I believe there were very few really "critical" decisions that truly decided the outcome of the battle.

I really like the Spitfire as a fighter, but I don't believe it was all that crucial to the outcome of the battle. Many reasonable aircraft would have worked as well. Many aircraft could have been substituted for the Hurricane and might have had better results.

I am somewhat disappointed that people believe that a British victory required the work of special heroes and that without the actions of these heroes, the war would have been lost. I believe this battle and the war were won by the actions of the common man with reasonably good leadership. I believe that the strategic situation with Nazi Germany being convinced that peace could be negotiated and with the superior industrial capacity of Britain, the outcome was never in doubt.

History by itself is a fascinating subject and doesn't need much embellishment.

- Ivan.