Crucial points of the Battle of Britain?

[pbehn]

Fair enough. Here's something a bit closer to the topic: given the RAFs response to the accidental bombing of London during the BoB was almost instant, do you think Churchill's go-ahead to bomb Berlin was a considered effort to move the Luftwaffe's focus from the beleaguered airfields to the British civilian population?

That was the effect but I dont think it was the plan, I think the plan was to give Hitler and Goering political problems at home, and to show people in UK that the war wasnt a one way street. There is another side to this, at the time Germany was receiving substantial supplies from Russia it was important to show both Russia and the USA that the UK could strike back.

http://ww2today.com/12th-november-1940nazi-soviet-talks-molotov-in-berlin

 

[bobbysocks]

Fair enough. Here's something a bit closer to the topic: given the RAFs response to the accidental bombing of London during the BoB was almost instant, do you think Churchill's go-ahead to bomb Berlin was a considered effort to move the Luftwaffe's focus from the beleaguered airfields to the British civilian population?

only one that can answer that with any certainty is Mr. Churchill himself.....we know how it play out and may speculate...but may never know the true motives or strategy

 

[pbehn]

only one that can answer that with any certainty is Mr. Churchill himself.....we know how it play out and may speculate...but may never know the true motives or strategy

Churchills speeches made his intentions very clear, whether he deliberately wanted a slug fest of bombing cities I dont know. At the time German cities were considerably further away from RAF airfields than British cities were from the LW.

 

[redcoat]

Churchills speeches made his intentions very clear, whether he deliberately wanted a slug fest of bombing cities I dont know. At the time German cities were considerably further away from RAF airfields than British cities were from the LW.

both the RAF and Luftwaffe were bombing each others cities from the first days of the battle. The RAF had been attacking targets in the Ruhr by night since May, and the luftwaffe had been launching night attacks on British towns and cities from the start of the battle, with the single exception of London.

 

[bobbysocks]

the bigger question for me is are you willing to risk the loss ( death or capture ) of trained pilots over germany or western europe with bombing raids? evidently they did. one of the strategies of the BoB was to fight over their own soil so if the pilots bailed out they possibly could continue flying and fighting if they suffered no serious wounds. if pilots were becoming in short supply it is more expedient to transition the pilot and co-pilot from multi-engine ac like a lanc than train a raw recruit from the ground up....or accelerate a current cadet with minimal hours. the bomber pilots probably already have several hundred hours of flight time....although not in a SE fighter. i seriously think the berlin raid was more of a psy-op than anything else....to show hitler and the nazis that no matter what everyone believed about the might of the 3rd reich they werent invulnerable to attack, even in berlin. like you said the lw was way closer to the uk than the other way.

 

[vikingBerserker]

If I had to guess the Berlin raid was similar to the Doolittle raid, mainly a morale builder.

 

[pbehn]

If I had to guess the Berlin raid was similar to the Doolittle raid, mainly a morale builder.

I was just about to post the same comment.....
why cant I give bacon?

 

[pbehn]

both the RAF and Luftwaffe were bombing each others cities from the first days of the battle. The RAF had been attacking targets in the Ruhr by night since May, and the luftwaffe had been launching night attacks on British towns and cities from the start of the battle, with the single exception of London.

True if you talk about the battle of Britain but the "rules of engagement" in the early days of the war were very strange for nations at war, a lot of leaflet dropping and specifically forbidden to bomb civilian targets, predicatably all sides were dragged into open unrestricted warfare.

 

[GrauGeist]

why cant I give bacon?

Horse has the system set up to give bacon once every 24 hours

 

[pbehn]

Horse has the system set up to give bacon once every 24 hours

Its like Saudi Arabia here....can I get a coke?

 

[CobberKane]

Personally, I would bet that Churchill not only had a fair idea of what would happen if he bombed Berlin, but intended that it should happen. By that stage of the BoB Fighter Command was barely hanging in. The accidental bombing of London could hardly be mistaken for a major change in Luftwaffe policy, but it provided Churchill with the excuse to do in retaliation what they had been accusing the Germans of - bombing civilian targets. But why do it? As has been previously mentioned, the Luftwaffe was in a far better position to bomb London than the RAF was to bomb Berlin; a move to civilian targets was bound to visit more vastly more destruction on British cities than German. The only explanation I can see for taking an action highly likely to precipitate this (maximum retaliation for a single German attack that was entirely at odds with their previous behaviour, and later turned out to be accidental) was to take the pressure off fighter command. Churchill was no fool, and he proved by his subsequent actions that he had no problem with the concept of total war.

 

[Milosh]

RAF FC wasn't barely hanging on it was 11 Group. 11 group had ~2/3 of the RAF fighters.

 

[stona]

And the bombing of London wasn't a retaliatory action, though that is how German propaganda portrayed it, a bit like returning fire on the Poles in September 1939.

The realisations that 'Sea Lion' was and always had been pie in the sky and that the RAF was not going to be defeated before the winter weather arrived in any case (bad German intelligence meant that the Wermacht actually had no idea how weakened Fighter Command was) meant that the change in targets amounted to a change in policy. If the threat of invasion wouldn't force Britain to the negotiating table to accept a settlement on German terms then maybe bombing London would.

This incidentally went against Nazi air doctrine. The decision to avoid 'morale bombing' grew out of the fact that, starting with Moltke the Elder, the Prussian-GermanArmy had developed a strong reliance on combined arms warfare. The objective was to defeat the enemy's army, if possible by large scale "operational" movements culminating in a battle of annihilation. The implication was that enemy cities could be taken after the battle , not as Trenchard had suggested, before it and not, as Douhet suggested, as a substitute for it.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Juha]

RAF FC wasn't barely hanging on it was 11 Group. 11 group had ~2/3 of the RAF fighters.

In fact 11 Group had 39% of the FC's serviceable fighters on 1 Sept 40 at 09.00hrs

 

[Juha]

And one must remember, that the attacks on London worked as Kesselring and co had thought, FC lost more planes in Sept than in Aug but pilot losses(KIA/MIA/POW) were slightly less. LW's losses in planes and aircrews were less in Sept, so in fact exchange rate got better for the LW. But still the fighter pilot situation, which was the dominant factor because in daylight LW bombers needed fighter escort and the number of escort available was the critical factor to the LW daylight effort, was worse in the LW than in the FC inSept and Oct 40.

 

[redcoat]

True if you talk about the battle of Britain but the "rules of engagement" in the early days of the war were very strange for nations at war, a lot of leaflet dropping and specifically forbidden to bomb civilian targets, predicatably all sides were dragged into open unrestricted warfare.

The Luftwaffe attacked targets in civilian areas during its invasions of Poland, Norway, Holland, Belguim, and France, while Britain only relaxed it's ban on attacking targets in civilian areas after the Luftwaffe attack on Rotterdam.

 

[Hop]

Going by memory, these areas weren't London proper AT THAT TIME as they might be now. I'm not very good on locales in and around London. But there were some areas hit that are now a part of London.

London has an odd history of local government thanks to its importance since Roman times. Even today "The City of London" has its own local government and police force, covering an area of just over 1 square mile in the centre of London, with a population of around 7,000. As a result of the powers of the old city, and the size of London relative to the rest of the UK, London local government didn't cover the whole of the city until the 1960s.

But Croydon was certainly part of London. It was part of the Metropolitan police area since 1840. It was covered by London transport, part of the London civil defence area. Croydon was the main London airport. The newspapers of the time talked of London being bombed.

And don't forget, a day or two later they were back bombing targets in Wimbledon, also in London.

 

[Hop]

Fair enough. Here's something a bit closer to the topic: given the RAFs response to the accidental bombing of London during the BoB was almost instant, do you think Churchill's go-ahead to bomb Berlin was a considered effort to move the Luftwaffe's focus from the beleaguered airfields to the British civilian population?

No, for two reasons.

First, as Overy points out, it was not a response to one supposedly accidental raid on London:

The raids on Berlin were in reality retaliation for the
persistent bombing of British conurbations and the high level of British civilian casualties that resulted. In July 258 civilians had been killed, in August 1,075; the figures included 136 children and 392 women. During the last half of August, as German bombers moved progressively further inland, bombs began to fall on the outskirts of London. On the night of 18/19 August bombs fell on Croydon, Wimbledon and the Maldens. On the night of 22/23 August the first bombs fell on central London in attacks described by observers as 'extensive' and for which no warning was given; on the night of 24/25 August bombs fell in Slough, Richmond Park and Dulwich. On the night the RAF first raided Berlin, bombs fell on Banstead, Croydon, Lewisham, Uxbridge, Harrow and Hayes. On the night of the next raid on Berlin, on 28/29 August, German aircraft bombed the following London areas: Finchley, St Pancras, Wembley, Wood Green, Southgate, Crayford, Old Kent Road, Mill Hill, Ilford, Hendon, Chigwell. London was under 'red' warning for seven hours and five minutes. The bombing of London began almost two weeks before Hitler's speech on 4 September, and well before the first raid on Berlin.

To put the those civilian deaths in context, in October, November and December 1940, which included the RAF's first area bombing attack, less than 400 German civilians were killed by bombing.

Secondly, the first raid on Berlin was ordered on the 25 August. Serviceable Spitfires and Hurricanes in the preceding days:

18 Aug - 624
19 Aug - 607
20 Aug - 636
21 Aug - 639
22 Aug - 631
23 Aug - 646
24 Aug - 646
25 Aug - 649

The War Cabinet received a weekly summary of the fighting. From the summary for the week 15 - 22 Aug:

During daylight hours on the 15th, 16th and 18th the German Air
Force attacked this country on a heavy scale, the enemy operating in waves
consisting in some cases of as many as 150 aircraft. On the 15th August it is
estimated that 1,200
enemy aircraft were engaged and on each of the other two
days about 700. On the remaining days of the week the scale of attack by
comparison was relatively inconsiderable, although there was a slight increase
on the 21st, when a large number of raids by one or two enemy aircraft was
made over a wide area.

On the three days on which the principal attacks were made a large
number of enemy fighters escorted their bombers; the primary object of these
attacks was to gain air superiority by destroying our fighter defences, both in
the air and on the ground. Throughout the week the main weight of attack was
directed against our aerodromes, which were attacked throughout the country,
some as many as three times. Aerodromes of every description were attacked,
though the emphasis was on fighter stations. No significant success was
achieved and, although 47 aerodromes were damaged, eleven considerably, the
air situation was not materially affected : 41 operational aircraft were destroyed
on the ground and hangars containing 47 twin-engined trainers were
burnt out. Naval and industrial targets were also attacked and in some cases
considerable damage was inflicted, though the aircraft industry did not suffer
seriously. By night the customary offensive reconnaissances have continued
except for the night of the 20th/21st, when enemy activity was negligible.
Our fighters engaged the enemy on all possible occasions, with the
result that at least 400 of his aircraft were destroyed. Our own fighter losses
are not serious, nor are they very heavy in view of the intensity of operations.
Fighter Command flew 1,122 patrols, involving 4,932 sorties during the week.
Details of casualties are given in Appendix V. In spite of the heavy losses
incurred, the enemy has failed in his primary object and has gained no strategic
advantage.

And from the next week's summary:

Enemy tactics have undergone a considerable change. No short-range
dive-bombers were seen, while last week 83 were destroyed; even the Ju. 88 has
not been used for dive-bombing. The long-range bomber force is being
increasingly employed and night attacks have been intensified. The raids were
mainly directed against aerodromes and ports, while industrial plants and the
aircraft industry also received considerable attention. Other raids were carried
out against aerodromes and oil storage, and a considerable amount of indis*
criminate bombing was included in the operations. The heaviest daylight attacks
of the week were made on Portsmouth and Ramsgate. At night industrial areas
in the Midlands were the principal objectives, though aircraft have flown over
London on several nights and bombs were dropped in the City and suburbs.
32. Enemry aircraft engaged in daylight operations have varied between
200 and 500 each day, except on the 23rd and 27th August, when activity
was limited to reconnaissance flights and to a few individual attacks,
involving not more than seventy-five aircraft. The heaviest attacks have
developed from the south-east, and large formations of bombers escorted by
fighters have been intercepted and dispersed by our fighters. Our fighter aero*
dromes seem to have been the principal objectives, but damage was relatively
small in view of the threatened weight of the attacks.
33. Portsmouth was heavily attacked on the 24th August. During an
attack aimed at Warmwell Aerodrome, in Dorset, on the following day, little
damage was caused and forty of the aircraft involved were destroyed by our
fighters. Machine-gun and bombing attacks have been made by single
reconnaissance aircraft on wireless stations at Daventry, Leafield, and in the
Scilly Isles, and on a number of inland aerodromes and coastal towns, but no
damage of importance has resulted.
34. Night attacks have been mainly concentrated on industrial targets in
the Bristol, Birmingham, Coventry and Middlesbrough areas, though high*
explosive and incendiary bombs have been dropped, often apparently at random,
in all districts of England and Wales. The London district was raided during
several nights of the current week, but the attacks appear to have been aimless
and only on the night of the 24th-25th August was any serious damage caused.
On most nights between two and three hundred aircraft were involved.
35. Fighter Command flew 1,196 patrols involving 4,433 sorties during the
week and not only inflicted very heavy casualties on the enemy but frequently
dispersed or turned back his formations and rendered most of his daylight
attacks abortive. Details of casualties are given in Appendix V.

I can't see any reason for Churchill to want a change. The RAF's airfields certainly weren't "beleaguered" according to the reports. In fact, things seemed to be going very well, with very high reported Luftwaffe casualties, low casualties for the RAF, little serious damage to airfields, and a strengthening RAF fighter force.

 

[stona]

The Luftwaffe attacked targets in civilian areas during its invasions of Poland, Norway, Holland, Belguim, and France, while Britain only relaxed it's ban on attacking targets in civilian areas after the Luftwaffe attack on Rotterdam.

The line had become blurred. Where bombs fell and where they were intended to fall are two different things. The Germans did not see even the attacks in and around Rotterdam as attacks on the civilian populations but rather as attacks on legitimate military targets, in line with their 'combined arms 'doctrine.
In fact the attack(s) on Rotterdam were in effect unintended 'morale' bombing attacks. French and British and French propaganda made a point of playing up the collateral damage whilst ignoring the intent.

The Luftwaffe specifically rejected the doctrine of Douhet and his successors (like Trenchard) most notably in 1935 with the adoption of Wever/Wilberg's ' Luftkriegfuhrung (The Conduct of the Air War)', L.Dv.16, which makes the aims of the Luftwaffe quite clear. It is encapsulated in the concept of 'Operativer Luftkrieg'. It is a development of an earlier 1931 Reichswehr technical manual, 'Die Truppenfuhrung', specifically for the Luftwaffe.

Page 14 para. 10 gives us those aims.

'To combat the enemy's air force, thereby weakening the enemy's armed forces and at the same time protecting our people and homeland

To directly support army and naval forces by taking part in operations and combat at sea and on land.

To attack the sources of power of the enemy's armed forces [strategic centres of gravity] and interrupt the flow of supplies to the front [interdiction]'

No priorities are assigned or given, but the doctrine for the use of the Luftwaffe is summed up in three sentences.

Earlier, particularly in Poland, faulty intelligence had led to attacks on what the Germans imagined to be concentrations of Polish forces which were not present. This happens to this day. A precision guided weapon on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or one on a civil air raid shelter in Baghdad are modern examples. When you start dropping high explosives, no matter how well or badly aimed there will be collateral damage.
In 1940 both the targeting and aiming was far less precise than we imagine it to be today, but things did and still do go wrong.

Cheers

Steve

 

[stona]

RAF FC wasn't barely hanging on it was 11 Group. 11 group had ~2/3 of the RAF fighters.

Serviceability rates and reserves are a good indication of the efficiency of any air force and the sort of campaign for which it has set itself up.

At around the time of the BoB the RAF had a higher percentage of serviceable 'first line' aircraft than the Luftwaffe. Not by much but small margins win battles.

The Luftwaffe, designed for short, sharp campaigns maintained a small reserve, about 20% of front line aircraft. In June 1940 the RAF had more aircraft in reserve than at the 'front' and was far better position to fight a long campaign of attrition through the summer and autumn of 1940. It's why having enough aircraft was not a problem for the RAF in 1940.

Cheers

Steve