Crucial points of the Battle of Britain?

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Out of curiosity, had the LW not conducted the Battle of Britain, would the RAF had started these cross Channel raids in 1940? I know historically they did some bombing at night and by day, especially the costly Blenheim raids in 1940, but these were relatively minor; had they not been on the defensive, was the plan to take the fight to German targets by day within fighter range?
 


Bad planning, yes, but if the losses werent being suffered, it wouldnt really have mattered how many or how few their losses were. Overwhelmingly LW losses artose from two causes, a low replacement rate, brought about by poor planning, and over use, which elevated loss rates to levels that, whilst not exactly unsustainable, did mean the LW got no resy, and could not expand when they absolutely needed to

You have 3,381 aircraft lost in 1939/40. I can tell you that between May 1940 and December 1940 the Luftwaffe lost 1,528 bombers, roughly half the total and about 1,000 single engine fighters (I have two numbers either side of that figure).
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so long as we have basic agreement on numbers, im happy


In 1941 (excluding November for which the records are lost) in all theatres, the Luftwaffe lost 5,002 aircraft of which only 1,327 were single engine fighters.
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This may be a number appearing in the Quartermasters returns, but its a number that cannot be correct, and i highly suspect, as Ive said several times now, that it includes aircraft decommissioned (and listed as a lost) rebuilt and r4eturned. in my book, that is not a loss. If the LW had lost 5000 aircraft in 1941, and none returned, it would not have had any aircraft available or on strength for 1942. It kind of did get to that point, but not as outright losses. In th3e east this is evidenced by its rather rapid recovery after the winter losses in the east.

This suggests that in the east, the attition rate was very heavy (and from that standpoint your claim that most losses came from the eastern front is very valid, however, these losses were recoverable, as hayward clearly outlines. In terms of outright losses , losses were relatively modest on the Eastern Front at this time, as Groehler also clearly shows.


i would argue that the Fighter arm was not dismantled by anyone, least of all by the Russians, until after 1942. However, its strength returns were kept in check by those losses. On the eastern front most of those 36% losses were being recycled back to the units after repair, as Hayward shows, but over thye winter too slowly. AQn exactly similar problem was occurring in the panzer arm and the infantry. Units (if you want to call an infantry formation a unit) were being damaged or wounded, removed from the effectives list, repaired and then returnmed. in the first year of the war in the east, the logistic system was bad, and this affected return rates very badly, including for the LW. But the tank arm provides the most vivid example. By December, the quartermaster was reporting a 5% effectives rate, that doesnt mean that heer had lost permanently 95% of its tanks. By the following June it was back to about 75% effectives, with a frontline tank strength of over 3000 (from memory). Tank production from new in that period was insufficient to make good those losses, they were repairing the thousands of broken down tanks already in the tank park.

The same thing happened in the LW, but not in the west, where losses tended to be almost always, complete, and permanent. Caldwell shows this very clearly as well, and its why, total permanent losses for the LW were only 28% of total losses came from thje Eastern Front(permanent loses....see caldwell).



More than half the sorties made by the German bomber groups in the West were either anti shipping strikes or minelaying strikes, but these were increasingly expensive for them (everything to do with the RAF, actually, as the Germans generally didnt know how these losses were occurring, so this is one instance where RAF claims are more reliable than LW strength reports)


The RAF operations of this period had no effect whatsoever on the German ability to continue its night time blitz.
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Understanable, since the vast majority of bomber operations werent directed to bombing British cities, they were mostly losing aircraft over the ocean or in the harbours and estuaries around england.

They had virtually no effect on Germany's industrial capability and had minimal effect on the Jagdwaffe's ability to oppose the day time USAAF raids as the gathered pace into 1943.
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The starategic campaigns of both the UK and Germany against cities were inneffective, with losses for BC considerably greater than the losses suffered by the German bombers attacking England. The difference was that the loss rates being suffered by the germans (across the board, including their fighters) were more serious than those suffered by the RAF. Between 1939 and 1942, the RAF had grown from a force of 1660 aircraft, to a force of over 6000 a/c. In that period, LW strengths had fluctuated, but overall, had barely moved. they could hgardly keep up with losses, and thjat included the period they faced off only against the RAF. They may not have been worried, but that does not escape the fact that their ongoing usage of their air force was bleeding it white. Without that ongoing attrition on all fronts, the LW would have recovered and then defeated its foes in detail. The LW would have been in a far better position to resist the US daytime onslaught, than it found itself in. There was a definte point and purpose in the attrition that was occurring, albeit in a Somme kind of way.

So worried were the Germans by this series of pin pricks inflicted by Fighter Command under Leigh-Mallory, that they based a mere two fighter Gruppen between the French Channel coast and Denmark!
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Versus, on average, about 18 squadrons of the RAF in the NW until 1942. Thats roughly the equivalent of 3 gruppen to 2. Classic military theory says that an advantage of 3:1 is required for an attack, this seldom presented itself for the RAF.

You are also forgetting the commitments in the South


I dont see how you can make that claim. At the beginning it was less than that, at the end, it was a lot more than that. A Spit IX with drop tanks has greater range than a Spit I or Hurri I without drop tanks. its a nonsense argument, meaningless and pointless. I think you know that.
 
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The predecessor of the Luftwaffe had conducted bombing raids using Gotha bombers against British targets during WW1 and were well aware that bombers could not avoid serious losses without escorts.
See here:
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a280686.pdf


Indeed that is why the Luftwaffe actually sent escorts. Furthermore without escorts an attrition strategy against British aircraft is not possible either. Yet the Luftwaffe was in no ways prepared for this.

Germany spent 7 years preparing for a land war with France and to a lessor extent Poland, Britain spent 7 years preparing for air with Germany. Britain was able to put far more time and effort in to a more focused objective.


In 1933, when Hitler was elected to the Chancellery, German armed forces were so weak that either Poland or France alone could have defeated Germany in a matter of days. Poland had a dictatorship under Beck, some bodies within Poland wanted to take German territory to Berlin as they regarded it as theirs, Germans within Poland had their land repossessed and redistributed to Poles and there were about 4000 murders of ethnic Germans during the interbellum and many simply had to leave. I don't want to exaggerate this as there were many reasonable people of Goodwill in Poland but the Germans did have legitimate defense needs and fears. In todays Eastern Europe, in Putins Russia there is a fear of reanexing Finland, Estonia, Lativia, Lithuania and the Ukraine now? There was a similar situation within the German region of Sudetenland within Czechoslovakia meanwhile France could at a whim invade and demand further payments under the Versailles treaty or even to annex territory as she had tried to do in the years after WW1. This sense of economic, ethnic, military, territorial vulnerability played upon Germans fears. Not Hitlers fears, not Nazi fears but German fears.

The strategic situation of Germany is that it is surrounded and its sea and trade access is easy to cut of. I would say it is obvious that in any conflict that involved a simultaneous east west attack, a highly likely scenario, German forces must be able to handle this. Moreover the defenses must be in Breadth not Depth to avoid any significant penetration of German territory, since the country is small. Since any conflict that goes on for any extended period becomes a war of attrition and blockade and favors the enemy. The solution to that is to have enough flexibility and speed of reaction to knock out at least one opponent before the advantages of attrition inevitably cause a German collapse.

This is the 'paradigm' German military planners intrinsically prepared for irrespective of Hitler. They did not plan on world conquest, they did not plan on invading Britain. They didn't have even a single amphibious landing craft in service, they didn't have any long range aircraft to support a maritime war against Britain. They didn't have long range fighter escorts. They abandoned the Junkers Ju 89, which would be madness if a war against Britain was contemplated considering the ease with which it was developed into the Ju 90 airliner and then the Ju 290 transport and by a roundabout path back to bomber.

This is the situation for the German Military, now its time to bring up Hitler. What did he tell the High Command to prepare for?

Nothing specific as far as I can tell. Mein Kampf includes clear references to expansion in the East. Stalin had Mein Kampf translated, the first translation in fact and was not alarmed. Hitler must be dumb to reveal his plans, right? However as ex Soviet Intelligence analyst Viktor Suvorov points out Hitler was speaking in terms of a process that would take hundreds of years. Hitlers first exposition of his aims were in what is now known as the November Speech (November 1937) just after Mussolini's visit. He left Goering surprised and dumbfounded, ie the leader of the Luftwaffe had no idea of what was coming. Hitler said that he saw himself as the savior of the German people, he saw them under threat, and to, in view of the fact that the French, British and Russians people had occupied much of the planet, would need to be able to defeat France, neutralize Britain and Occupy Western Russia. But these were not specific plans, with a specific timetable and sequence they were general objectives.

When war broke out in September 1939 the German armed forces were still in a state of building this fundamentally defensive strategy against its neighbors: what Hitler had said would make no difference because the precarious German resource situation meant diverting resources for such things as a long range air force was a folly.

By 1938 Britain was well on the way to replacing its out of date multi-engine biplane bombers with multi-engine monoplane bombers. Britain was armed to the teeth with a well layed out plan for expansion that had been put in place by Chamberlain.

Why did a Heinkel He 111P have enough range to reach Britain? Simple, because the He 111 was essentially an airliner. It was a Douglass DC2 with gun ports and liquid cooled engines and aircraft of that type have that kind of performance. It lacked a rear turret.

At the outset of the WW2 (September 1929) RAF strength was
1 266 Hadley Page Hampton.
2 6 squadrons of Wellingtons, which in my estimate would be 120 Wellingtons given RAF squadron sizes and aircraft held in reserve.
3 Slightly more Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys of which 205 had been delivered by July 1939. This was an aircraft specifically designed to be a night bomber, a role it was very effective in.
I would assume at least 150 would be in front line service.

So that's about 500 front line twin engine medium bombers.

The Hampton was not inferior to the Dornier Do 17, the 230mph Whitworth Whitley was not inferior to the contemporaneous 250mph Heinkel He 111P and had a better armament layout. The Ju 88A1 barely saw service and was still riddled with teething problems till the Ju 88A5 (the A5 preceded the A4). The Vickers Wellington was the finest bomber in the world at the time and unlike the German bombers had a tail turret with superior armament.

The Fairy Battle (over 1000 in service) was faster than a Ju 87 Stuka, could fly further, could also dive bomb, though not vertically and could unlike the Ju 87 level bomb with a string of 4 x 250lb bombs. During the Battle of France Battles took out Bridges over the Sein by level bombing from low altitude. The Battle was no more vulnerable than the Stuka. Over 1000 were in service at the outset of WW2 and like the Vickers Wellesley it had a range of around 1200 miles. Enough to strike Germany from Britain, the reverse can't be said for the Ju 87.

There were 16 squadrons of Bristol Blenheim's Mk I by 1938 though by 1939 they had been replaced with 9 squadrons of Mk IV of which 6 were bomber squadrons.

It's worth also noting the precarious economic situation of Germany in 1939 which limited any expansion of the Luftwaffe. In practical terms the Me 109E was not suitable for mass production. It had been designed around the concept of jobbing of sub assemblies to jobbing shops and various subcontractors. This while clever to a degree it also severely interfered with implementation of truly efficient mass production. That wasn't achieved till the redesigned Me 109F series. The spitfire wing was notoriously difficult to produce but once large scale presses were introduced it was as efficient as anything could be.
 
The Mk IX Spitfire wasn't in production until mid 1942, let alone with a slipper tank. Until then the British were struggling against the Fw 190 (see Dowding's concerns about the inferiority of RAF fighters at this time).
My comment about Lille is based on the period from the end of the BoB, throughout 1941 and well into 1942 an approximately eighteen month period when the Fighter Command losses under discussion occurred. It is not nonsense, meaningless or pointless. It is essentially the limit of RAF fighter operations for this period as evidenced by the comments of numerous operational pilots and commanders. I cited a couple earlier. By late 1942/early 1943 the Americans were becoming involved and it was their turn to express exasperation at the limited range of RAF Fighter Command (see Arnold's comments).
Cheers
Steve
 

If I understand the evolution of the spitfire wing correctly it is that the idea of the structure, which evolved before the Spitfire, was that main spar D section design would allow carriage of quite large amounts of fuel in the leading edge. This was certainly proposed for Supermarine long range bombers. PRU spitfires used this while some gun armed variants (from the Mk VII/VIII onwards) had tanks here. I don't know if this was Mitchell intention at the time. It added quite a bit of range, about 35%.
 

Perfectly correct. Most people don't realise just how disasterous that trio were (Portal, Douglas and LM). Portal (and some of the actual letters are available in some books) fought against the 'long range fighter' right to the very bitter end. Even in late '43 he was writing to Arnold and telling him it was impossible ...just as the P-51B was coming into service. What can you say?

There were, after they got a handle on the CoG issue in the Mk V, no technical reasons why a medium range Spit Mk V (combat radius of 250-300 miles) could not have been built. With a LR Mk IX /VIII (450-500 mile C.R.) coming in later. Both the British and the Americans built and tested LR Spit prototypes (Quill mentions a test in his book for example).

Douglas's and LM's 'leaning towards the enemy' approach wasn't just tactically deficient it was strategically disasterous because, as you said, it stole away planes from Malta, North Africa and the Far East, where they were critically needed. The both (with Portals' support) fought against any Spits going anywhere else. . For example the Desert Air Force suffered appallingly in their obsolete P-40s and Hurricanes against 109Fs (and later Gs). The DAF was just lucky that the 109s concentrated against their fighters rather than their bombers, otherwise it would not be too hard to imagine a scenario where the DAF is effectively gutted as an attacking force in 42.

Park showed the way when he took over in Malta. Within weeks (using far better tactics) he gutted the attacking Luftwaffe, then he went on the offensive. His tactics were straightforward, mixes of spit fighters and fighter bombers (he was the first to add bombs to Spits). Then attacked their airfields. If the Luftwaffe didn't come up they got hammered in their airfields. They had the choice of having to fight (and they were poorly placed for a battle of attrition) or move their airfields further away and reducing their effectiveness. In either case it was a strategic win.
If he had remained at 11 Group (or even better been put in charge of Fighter Command) he would have applied the same tactics in France/Holland/etc (and killing those big clumsy, easy to shoot down bog wings tactics). And, I am very sure, would have had far longer ranged Spits very quickly too. He also would have made sure that the primary areas of combat in '41 '42 (Malta, NE, FE) were well supplied very early on.

The reasons for the second point are also obvious, the Luftwaffe wouldn't have reinforced France/etc (they would have pulled back more basically taking them out of the game there) because there were no strategic reasons to. But they did reinforce the ME and the Med to a great extent because they were primary strategic combat areas. With greater losses in the ME/Med they would have been forced to choose between putting more forces there that would have had to be pulled from the Russian front, or lose their airpower there (in either case the Allies win strategically).

So the "trio's" combination of sabotaging LR fighters, denying the primary combat areas of the time effective fighter airpower, forcing useless tactics (big wings) on pilots, attacking an easily defended (and strategically at the time unimportant) area with resulting appalling losses. So when you add it all up, how many thousands of fighter pilots and bomber crews were they responsible for killing for little or no result?
 
pbehn said:
The problem with discussing a British escort fighter is it leads to a discussion of which bombers it world escort, much as I like the Lancaster as an aeroplane as an escorted daylight bomber it would be mince.
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Depends on the tactics used. The RAF at that time had the numbers to easily crush any France based Luftwaffe. Again noting that good tactics had to be applied.

But there were major strategic targets in France that was essential for British to take out in '41 and the Luftwaffe would have HAD to defend them. That was the U-boat bases, before they were hardened.

The fact that the RAF ignored them until they had built all their bomb proof bunkers was a strategic mistake of the first order. Again their obsession with hammering cities got in the way of them being able to a make major strategic contribution to the war.

It wouldn't have been easy, there would have been heavy losses and a 300 mile CR Spit was essential because it would have had to be done in daylight. BUT, the British could have afforded it (they threw away far more on useless things) and saved millions of tons of shipping that were later sunk by the France based U-boats. The complete disinterest (and their continual disinterest of Coastal Command) by the RAF higher levels in a campaign like that always astonishes me.

So much so that at times I think that (excepting the BoB, the DAF ,the TAF and Coastal Command) the RAF was more of a strategic liability to the British than an asset.
 

Yes, Cotton showed the way. tanks in the leading edge of the wings, tank under the pilot seat, tank behind the pilot. They squeezed in fuel everywhere.

You could get, with all armament 13 UK gals in the leading edge of each wing (26 UK gals in total). There was the option, if you ditched the 2x0.303" in each wing to add another 7-8.
With a bob weight on the elevator cable (and the elevator aerodynamic fixes)you could run to 66 (or even 70) UK gals behind the pilot for a MK IX/VII. The plane (just like the Mustang) was unstable until you got down to half that. It steadily improved until at 20gals it was the same as being empty.

This didn't matter since it was just climb and economical cruise to the bomber rendezvous point. So normal practice would be to take off and use the rear tank first (down to say 20 gals), then switch to 90gal drop tank for the rest of the rendezvous trip and the initial escort phase until combat, then dropping the tank, combat, perhaps depending on fuel and ammo still available a further escort phase before returning, using the remaining rear and main/wing tanks.

Based on that then a 500 mile escort radius is quite possible with a reasonable reserve for a MK VIII fuel configuration (the conversion of a Mk IX to have the wing tanks and the larger front main tanks, 96 vs 87 gals should have presented no real problems). You needed about 87 gals left after getting there, escorting and combat to get back from a 500 mile escort trip, with a 100 miles in reserve.

The Spit V was the worst one re CoG issues, so even with the elevator fixes and bob weight then you are probably limited to (say) a 30 gal rear tank (or even 10 under the pilot, with 20 rear?). But, with the leading edge tanks (easy to fit) and a 45gal drop tank then a 300-350 (maybe 400 miles with careful planning and a 90 gal drop tank) escort radius is quite possible. Without the 26 gals leading edge tank then on a Mk V you are limited to 300 miles, just.


The Mustang was so good because it had more internal fuel (221 vs 188 max UK gals) and could carry larger drop tanks (125 vs 90 UK gals). It used a little less in cruise and had a bit higher cruise speed, but that was partially traded off by higher usage in the climb and combat phases. It's CoG was a bit better than the Spits so you could retain a higher amount of rear tank fuel and still be combat capable, thus having more for the return (you then use more of the drop tanks).
 
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For believing that escort fighters were needed the Luftwaffe sure spent an awful lot of time and money on the Schnellbomber concept.
A concept that was reinforced during the Spanish civil war even though it was wrong. The Japanese were actually leaning the correct lesson in China but nobody was paying much attention there.


By 1938 Britain was well on the way to replacing its out of date multi-engine biplane bombers with multi-engine monoplane bombers. Britain was armed to the teeth with a well layed out plan for expansion that had been put in place by Chamberlain.
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I guess it depends on what you mean by "well on the way" and "armed to the teeth" in 1938. Britain did have prototypes built and plans for expansion and production. However by Sept of 1938 (Munich Crisis) there were about 16 squadrons of Blenehim Is, 4-5 squadrons of Wellesleys (although they were going to the mid-east in 1938) Number of Battles in service in 1938? The first batch of 155 ordered had considerable trouble with their Melrin I engines and the switch to the Melrin II caused considerable trouble with the production of the Hurricane being held up while engines were sent to Fairey, March 1938 saw R-R producing about 50 Melrins a month although this soon tripled. Second batch of Battles starts production in late spring of 1938? The Whitley was in production but the first 34 used the rather terrible Tiger IX engine. In fact by Sept 1939 there were 7 squadrons flying Whitleys and two of them were not fully equipped. The two not fulley equiped and only one other one had the Merlin powered Whiteys, the other 4 squadrons had planes with Tiger VIII engines. ALL Whitley MK Is and IIs having been pulled from operational units. First Wellington doesn't reach an operational squadron until Oct 1938. Three squadrons were operating Hampdens by Dec of 1938.


Please, not this old hack again. A number of planes were designed to be dual purpose in the early/mid 30s. the question is how far one way or the other they tipped. The He 111 was a lousy airliner, with accommodations as bad or worse than the Boeing 247 which flew 2 years earlier, worse than the Ju 52 and much worse than the DC-2 which flew about one year earlier. I would also note that airliners only have to fly one way, they are allowed to refuel before making the return trip. An airliner flying London to Berlin only needs a range of around 600 miles plus reserves.


So that's about 500 front line twin engine medium bombers
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.

And the Germans had about 700 He 111s in serviceable condition at the start of the war, granted some may have been in training units, now lets add the Do-17s and the Ju-86s.

The Vickers Wellington was the finest bomber in the world at the time and unlike the German bombers had a tail turret with superior armament.
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A bit debatable. The Wellington I ( there was a lot difference by the time you get to the IC) using Vickers "turrets" and not Frazer-Nash turrets. The MK I also used a ventral "dustbin" which cut 16mph form the planes speed (not unlike the dustbins used by German bombers in Spanish civil war. Aside from the difference in guns the MK I had a lower gross weight than a MK IA or C (Handled by their larger tires which were no longer fully enclosed).


The Fairey Battle had no dive bombing sight. The Crews were not really trained for dive bombing or even army co-operation. True tactical support was supposed to handled by the Lysander ( a pair of 250lb bombs).

In Sept 1939 the Germans had a much more formidable bombing force than the British had (although the British were catching up fast.) The BF 110 was also supposed to clear the way for the bombers and while not an escort fighter as the term was latter known it was supposed hit enemy interceptors on the ground or in the initial stages of climb and keep them from attacking the bombers that way and do it at ranges beyond that of the 109. Didn't work against radar.

Some of the luftwaffe concepts/tatical ideas didn't work but lets not pretend they weren't thinking of or working on ways to project air power beyond the immediate land battle field.
 
The "Schnellbomber" concept was something that other airforces were always looking at, too.

The basic idea, is to have a bomber fast enough, that it eliminates the need for escorts. In theory, this will free up fighter groups for other duties as well as eliminate the need for defensive armament and related crew.

The Mosquito was in essence, an ideal "Schnellbomber" and perhaps, the pinnacle of the theory in practice, was the Ar234.
 

From Spitfire IX/XI/XVI Pilot's Notes:

Handling:



Economical flying and fuel consumption:


 

Methinks you're sitting on both sides of the fence. Surely availability of longer-range fighters would increase the impetus for taking offensive action in Europe and hence made it even less likely that high-performance fighters would be available for other theatres. If L-M had employed Park's tactics that you're praising, would fighter-bomber Spitfires escorted by yet more Spitfires be any less of a drain on resources than a Big Wing?
 
Koopernic said:
If I understand the evolution of the spitfire wing correctly it is that the idea of the structure, which evolved before the Spitfire, was that main spar D section design would allow carriage of quite large amounts of fuel in the leading edge.
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Not in the case of the Spitfire. It was originally designed to be part of the cooling system with condensers in the wing. The wing fuel cell size was limited because the wing ribs get in the way. To fit the 12.5 gallon cells in the leading edge required the removal of the front of at least one rib IIRC. (Edit I see the larger 66 gallon leading edge tanks covered below).
Cheers
Steve
 
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Good call on the purpose of the D box, Steve.
For the LE tanks to be installed, two ribs were removed*, and the skin was doubled at that wing section, in order to reinforce it now that ribs are not there.

*added: total of 4 per A/C; just the part of the ribs in front of the spar
 
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for June 1942, the operations over France, Belgium, the North Sea, the channel, the British isles, the western approaches and the Irish Sea cost the germans 89 aircraft lost and 105 damaged, of which nearly 60 were written off. In that same time, the RAF lost 68 shot down and 48 Cat E losses. These numbers exlude non combat related losses. There were a few additional RAF aircraft not classified as cat E but scrapped anyway. June was the month that LW losses first exceeded RAF losses in this TO, though RAF non combat losses pushed the figures back over the top.

Not so bad in my opinion, though a long range fighter would have been an enormous help, unquestionably.
 
parsifal said:
for June 1942, the operations over France, Belgium, the North Sea, the channel, the British isles, the western approaches and the Irish Sea cost the germans 89 aircraft lost and 105 damaged, of which nearly 60 were written off.
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And in June 1942 the Germans lost 350 aircraft on the Eastern Front. This is before the summer offensives began, when losses rose sharply, but does include losses around Sevastopol.

Steve
 
stona said:
And in June 1942 the Germans lost 350 aircraft on the Eastern Front. This is before the summer offensives began, when losses rose sharply, but does include losses around Sevastopol.

Steve
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And 299 on the other Fronts, again, MTO was important but often forgotten drain of the LW resources. In oct 42 LW lost more planes on the other fronts than on the Eastern Front 324 vs 200 and in Nov massively so 595 vs 224, in Dec it it was again other way around 366 vs 408.

Juha
 
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Think of the weather on the Eastern Front in October and November and its impact on operations. It may well have limited operations in NW Europe too. Also consider that the leap in losses elsewhere, particularly the MTO coincides with 'Torch'.
Stalingrad must be a contributor to losses in the East in December when you'd expect operations to be curtailed.
Cheers
Steve
 
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