Germany adopts late war 8th AF tactics during the BoB

nuuumannn · Apr 17, 2013

Thank god the "It will do" mentality pervaded at the time!

It's the very reason Britain survived, Old Boy! Seriously though, look at the Spitfire Mk.IX, very much an "It'll do for now" solution.

The Luftwaffe (in the BoB) spent a lot of time and effort photographing, and then bombing, the wrong airfields.

Indeed they did, Terry; I've seen quite a few of the Luftwaffe pre-raid images from the collection of the RCAHMS in Edinburgh, but their post-raid images are few and far between, which meant they had no way of quantifying their results. This lack of post-raid information caused them to also bomb the wrong targets and often the same targets unintentionally.

I would still put forward night bombing of industrial targets (no one mentioned the indiscriminate bombing of cities as a solution - obviously didn't work) and airfields by the LW; they had the means to do it with some accuracy owing to their use of electronic direction finding equipment; Knickebein, X and Y Gerat. Resistance by British night fighters was minimal, so the bombers could have had a better chance of doing greater damage to Britain's war industry than they did by attacking during daylight hours.

stona · Apr 17, 2013

fastmongrel said:
I think the mobile sets were type9 but it should say on the site I couldnt link to.

The Type 9 wasn't mobile in the modern sense of a self contained unit (like the Type 11) either. It consisted of a convoy of trucks carrying the various elements of the system,including a 105' wooden mast and "Lutkin" array (named after Mr F E Lutkin). It was a system that used the same aerial for transmission and reception.
There was one on the Isle of Wight to cover the Chain Home station at Ventnor which was considered particularly vulnerable for obvious reasons. I'm not sure how many others there were in 1940.
Cheers
Steve

fastmongrel · Apr 17, 2013

Perhaps it should be called a moveable set then

I have read that a type 9 could be up and running within 12 hours though how that was calibrated I dont know.

stona · Apr 17, 2013

I have "Watching the Skies" by Jack (I think) Gough at home. I'm sure the answer would be in there. Unfortunately I've just gone on tour and won't be home for a while.

It's a good account of radar from the early days up to the seventies. A passing familiarity with the basic concepts of radar will help in understanding some of the more technical parts of the book,of which there are several. It is nonetheless useful to the layman like me. Unfortunately it's a book difficult to find at a sensible price nowadays.

Cheers

Steve

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

Read somewhere that the 109 Jabos would be sucessfull against airfields and radar sites if widely used.

fastmongrel · Apr 17, 2013

Jenisch said:
Read somewhere that the 109 Jabos would be sucessfull against airfields and radar sites if widely used.

I cant see why, fighter bombers have never been particulary succesful against airfields. If the aircraft were dispersed into blastproof E pens all a Jabo is going to do is dig a small hole in a huge grass field. As for radar if a JU87 struggled to knock out a Chain Home how is a 109 with no bombing site going to do.

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

And strafe airfields?

GregP · Apr 17, 2013

The "widely used" part is the key. They didn;t have that many Bf 109's and, while they might have been successful in their forst 1 - 2 sorties, once Fighter Command realized that the 109's were being used as fighter-bombers, they would not have ignored the fighter sweeps any longer. So, it might have had a temoprary successful effect, but a bomb-carrying Bf 109 is a relatively easy target for a clean Spitfire or Hurricane.

So ... you might be right ... or not, depending on the response of Fighter Command to the use of Bf 109 Jabos. You contention is certainly one of the possibilities.

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

I'm curious of the avaliablity of fighter pilots to both sides...

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

It's very mentioned that FC had a significative advantage of fight over it's own territory, as shoot down pilots were able to return (if they parachuted, of course). I'm skeptical of the impact this really had, since it did not saved the LW in '44-45.

stona · Apr 17, 2013

Jenisch said:
It's very mentioned that FC had a significative advantage of fight over it's own territory, as shoot down pilots were able to return (if they parachuted, of course). I'm skeptical of the impact this really had, since it did not saved the LW in '44-45.

On aircrew generally it had a huge impact. Look at the numbers of Luftwaffe PoWs towards the end of the BoB. In August 1940 the RAF had 7 aircrew listed as missing. The Luftwaffe had 804.
Only a fraction of these would have been Bf 109 pilots and many may have been dead,still many were wounded and/or PoW.

After the invasion in '44/'45 an allied pilot had a better chance of regaining his own lines. Not least,he didn't have to cross the Channel. The Channel was a psychological as well as physical barrier to the pilot of a damaged aircraft,particularly for the Luftwaffe in 1940.

Cheers

Steve

fastmongrel · Apr 17, 2013

Jenisch said:
And strafe airfields?

If the aircraft are dispersed into blast pens your just strafing about 20 hectares of grass field and some buildings. You might kill a few Moles and break a few windows but otherwise your wasting valuable ammo.

stona · Apr 17, 2013

Jenisch said:
Read somewhere that the 109 Jabos would be sucessfull against airfields and radar sites if widely used.

The Luftwaffe,not just Jabos,was effective against these targets. Unfortunately bad intelligence,bad leadership and probably several other bads,meant that often the wrong airfields were attacked and opportunities to really punch some holes in Chain Home were not exploited.
Just like the allies later in the war the Luftwaffe almost invariably failed to attack targets repeatedly,thereby failing to keep the pressure on those facilities and their defending forces.

When you can exert pressure on an enemy,and the Luftwaffe could and did exert pressure on Fighter Command,it is essential to maintain it in order to force a decision. In that the Luftwaffe failed miserably.

Yet another reason why we won!

Cheers

Steve

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

fastmongrel said:
If the aircraft are dispersed into blast pens your just strafing about 20 hectares of grass field and some buildings. You might kill a few Moles and break a few windows but otherwise your wasting valuable ammo.

How do you view the stafing of LW airfields in '44-45?

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

stona said:
On aircrew generally it had a huge impact.

Yeah.

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

To Dave and the ones discussing politics during the BoB:

It's interesting to note that while the BoB was still undecided, Hitler orders the draft of Operation Barbarossa. That makes clear the German "peace" prospectives would lead to nowhere. During the BoB, the British were more worried with the Nazi-Soviet cooperation, which was as dangeours to their survival as Germany conquering the USSR.

fastmongrel · Apr 17, 2013

Jenisch said:
How do you view the stafing of LW airfields in '44-45?

The Allies had thousands of Fighter Bombers in 44/45 armed with multiple rockets, big bombs, cannons and HMGs, in 1940 the LW might have had a 100 or so Jabos that probably would have carried a single 250 kg bomb.

How many LW airfields did the Allies close down permanently?

Jenisch · Apr 17, 2013

fastmongrel said:
The Allies had thousands of Fighter Bombers in 44/45 armed with multiple rockets, big bombs, cannons and HMGs

IIRC, many times the airfields were attacked by the bomber escorts after no contact with the LW was made, so there would only the the MGs. But I don't think the Emil with it's two cannons and 7.92 mgs with lots of rounds would fare bad strafing RAF planes.

How many LW airfields did the Allies close down permanently?

"Permanentely" is a rather strong word. The best is know how many acft the LW lost due to such attacks. I don't have that information.

OldSkeptic · May 1, 2013

alejandro_ said:
The other issue is with numbers. The UK produced more aircraft in 1940/41 than Germany. Even with better tactics... would the Luftwaffe be able to gain air superiority?

Nope, unless Park stuffed up. Stephen Bungay's book "Most dangerous Enemy" pretty much sums it all up.

The best (and it is the very best) they could have achieved would be like air parity over the SE of England and only for a short time as the laws of attrition were destroying the Luftwaffe and, unlike the RAF, they didn't have the fighter production and the pilot training capacity to maintain it for long.

Parity is not air supremacy and not nearly enough for an invasion to succeed.

Basically it was the RAF's battle to lose. Fortunately we had Dowding and Park. That ($^^)(*^)) Leigh Mallory would have lost it in about a month, if not sooner.

So nothing was guaranteed and the RAF had to do all the right things. But provided they did then they were going to win.

The Germans were very clever, they tried out about every tactic you could think of. Fighter sweeps, fake raids, airfield attacks, etc, etc, etc.
The nightmare one was to draw the fighters up by some dummy raid, then hammer them on the ground. But Park handled it perfectly week after week after week.

Just about every country with an air force has war gamed the Bob out and no one (to my knowledge) has managed to beat Park's performance or gotten the Luftwaffe to win.

Germany adopts late war 8th AF tactics during the BoB

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