If the RAF had been defeated in the Battle of Britain

pinsog said:

I just dont see how the Germans could have maintained any kind of air supremacy over England with a fighter as short legged as the 109. All the British had to do was withdraw all fighters and bases back beyond the effective range of 109's and savage any German bomber force that came beyond that point. They could continue to attack and harass German fighters within the range of the 109 as they chose. Basically, they would pick and choose where and when they tangled with German fighters.

That being said, exactly how far could the 109 effectively escort bombers?

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Here is what I could find. I think your observation is accurate. It seems to me that the 109 is not an aircraft well designed for offensive operations.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardest_Day

My understanding is that the fall of France was in effect a dead end for Germany and that in 1940 Hitler could take the war no further in terms of further conquests. Germany was left with a Gordian Knot to undo in 1940 as Britain absolutely had to be invaded as a prerequisite to invading the USSR but that at the same time an invasion of Britain would have cost Germany such heavy losses that it would not of had the forces to later attack the USSR. Germany did not have the capability to invade Britain in 1940 but the longer Germany left an invasion of Britain the stronger Britain would have got and with it an invasion would have only become more and more difficult and costly. The USSR would of course have took advantage of the time it took Germany to defeat Britain to strengthen and build its forces.

Hitler already had his heart and mind set on Russia in 1940 and the Battle of Britain was all about getting Britain to surrender. Hitler was prepared to risk an invasion of Russia with Britain still in the war because invading Britain would have been at the cost of not invading the USSR. Britain in effect held the balance of power in 1940 and barred a successful German invasion of Russia. If the Germans had not have been fighting the British in North Africa, Greece and guarding occupied Europe against attacks from the British this could have made the difference against Russia.

stona said:

They did. They camouflaged runways and laid false hedgerows, made from coloured sand. False field patterns and hedges were also painted onto runways. They also used decoy sites but more for night time deception.





This one shows the fake hedgerows running acroos the runways clearly.



Cheers

Steve

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Not sure exactly where the airfield is located in these photos (note to me: that's the point dummy! ) although the first one seems quite obvious.

oldcrowcv63 said:

Not sure exactly where the airfield is located in these photos (note to me: that's the point dummy! ) although the first one seems quite obvious.

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Zoom in and look for the NAAFI tea van



Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nice disruptive camouflage on the buildings too. I missed what might be another runway in the top image as well

Cheers

Steve

Thanks Stona that comparison really helps, especially for these old eyes.

I dont think that the RAF losing the air war in the BOB opens the way for invasion, but i do think it will mean Britain would come in for a terrible pounding, perhaps to the point of having to make terms with the Germans.

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Exactly.

An invasion would fail because it would take the Luftwaffe many days to inflict crippling losses on the Royal Navy, whilst the Royal Navy can inflict crippling losses on the German invasion fleet in hours. The RN's task is simple: wait in bases outside effective Luftwaffe air cover. When the invasion occurs, go in, sink enough German ships, withdraw. The German forces that do get ashore won't have enough resupply to survive British counter attacks.

What's far more dangerous to Britain is large German bomber fleets hitting the towns and cities and industry of the South East in daylight. Being able to operate freely in daylight makes German bombing much more accurate and effective. With the very short ranges involved the Luftwaffe can lift significant tonnages.

I can't see how the government could survive if the Luftwaffe was able to operate freely by day over southern England. They would have to seek peace with Germany.

I just dont see how the Germans could have maintained any kind of air supremacy over England with a fighter as short legged as the 109. All the British had to do was withdraw all fighters and bases back beyond the effective range of 109's and savage any German bomber force that came beyond that point.

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It's easy to move the RAF and RN out of German fighter cover, which is why an invasion would never work. It's not easy to move Supermarine, or Hawker's factories in Langley and Kingston, or London itself. The British government could not abandon the south east to German bombing.

That being said, exactly how far could the 109 effectively escort bombers?

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Galland complained that they only had 10 (or 15) minutes combat time over central London, so north and west London is about the limit.

The attrition of qualified pilots was also a much closer run thing than many realise.

Dowding wrote. "The stabilisation of squadrons in the line and the creation of class "C" squadrons was a desperate expedient forced upon me by the heavy losses."

Nearly 1/3 of Fighter Commands pilots (440) were effectively non-operational at the end of September 1940.

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If 440 pilots were effectively non-operational, that still leaves 880 pilots able to fight. The Luftwaffe had 676 Jagdwaffe pilots fit for duty on 29 September. Dowding was desperate because the intelligence services greatly overestimated German strength.

Jenisch said:

What about if Mussolini sends torpedo bombers to augment the Corpo Aereo Italiano in the proposed scenario?

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and Italian torpedo bombers sank how many RN warships in the Med.

They were not that devastating

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About Biggin Hill from The Battle of Britain Then and Now -

"Throughout the next two weeks, the aerodrome suffered almost daily air raids. On some occasions attacks came in twice a day, the buildings being knocked out one by one, consequently reducing the efficiency of the station."

"Friday August 30 1940 was the day Biggin was nearly knocked out of the battle altogether."

"The worst blow was a personnel shelter which received a direct hit, killing many of those inside. The terrible task of having to dig them out went on through that nightand the following day. All together there were 39 killed and 26 wounded."

"Practically no buildings remained in a habitable conditionand the main road running through the camp was blocked by two large craters. All services and communications were out of action and the Operations Room was temporarily moved to a shop a quarter of a mile away in the Pantiles."

I'd recommend this book for anyone with an interest in the subject of decoy airfields in Britain:

Fields of Deception: Britain's Bombing Decoys of WWII: Amazon.co.uk: Colin Dobinson: Books

Park wrote to Dowding on 22nd September 1940.

"Contrary to the general belief and official reports, the enemy's bombing attacks by day did extensive damage to five of our forward aerodromes and also to six of our seven Sector stations. The damage to forward stations was so severe that Manston and Lympne were on several occasions quite unfit for operating fighters."

Sector control rooms at Kenley and Biggin Hill were transferred to less well equipped emergency facilities. According to Park these "Emergency Operations Rooms were too small to house the essential personnel" and perhaps more worryingly lacked enough telephone landlines to "enable normal operations of three squadrons per Sector."

Why the Sector control rooms associated infrastructure, communications, power and so on were housed in flimsy buildings, unprotected, above ground is a question for Dowding. Whilst we're at it we could also ask about the delays in filtering due to his insistence of centralising this at Fighter Command HQ.
He is one of my heroes but he made some serious errors of judgement.

It's a good job that the Luftwaffe's non existant intelligence gathering organisation had no idea just how well they were doing.

Cheers

Steve

redcoat said:

and Italian torpedo bombers sank how many RN warships in the Med

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Just caught this, they actual sank a few and /or more than the few, torpedo damage could put a ship out of action for months if not over a year. the problem is the timing.

From Wiki:

"The Sparviero began its torpedo bomber (Aerosilurante in Italian) career on 25 July 1940 when a new unit was established after several years of experiments."

"The first sortie under way on 15 August 1940 saw five SM.79s that had been modified and prepared for the task sent to El Adem airfield"

"After several months, and despite the losses and the first unfortunate mission, the core of the 278th was still operating the same four aircraft."

Which seems to be contradicted in other text. By August of 1941 they had put torpedoes into 5 British cruisers (sinking none) and a single destroyer (which sank) and several merchant ships. But by this time there were two a number of units acting as torpedo bombers.
However it seems in the early fall of 1940 the Italian torpedo bomber strength was one unit with 4-5 aircraft.

Axis anti-shipping ability in Sept. 1940 was NOT what it was in the summer/fall of 1941.

Jenisch said:

What about if Mussolini sends torpedo bombers to augment the Corpo Aereo Italiano in the proposed scenario?

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The following is from wiki, but corrected as best i can from other sources that I have. Wiki is basically accurate however.

The development of the torpedo capbilities in the RA was still some distance off. They were not registering much sucess in 1940, and were deployed in miniscule numbers for most of that year.

The RA Aerosilurante began with the SM 79 and were forming at the time of italy's entry. They moved to Nothrt Africa in August to the area around Tobruk initially The italians had spent years developing torpedo bombing, but had poured only a few actual resources into it, as high level bombing was seen as a better way to attack ships, with fewer risks.....in this regard they made the same mistakes as the british. Despite all the development work, the unit still went into action without proper aiming systems and a lacking tactical doctrine.

An attack on shipping in Alexandria was quickly organized. There had been experiments for many years but still, no service, no gear (except hardpoints) and no tactics were developed for the new speciality. This was despite previous Italian experiments into the practice of aerial torpedoing in 1914, 26 years earlier.

The first sortie under way on 15 August 1940 saw five SM.79s that had been modified and prepared for the task (only a small fraction of SM 79s were so modified) sent to El Adem airfield. Among their pilots were Buscaglia, Dequal and other pilots destined to become "aces" (but they were still learning the trade in 1940). The journey was made at an altitude of 1,500 m (4,920 ft) and after two hours, at 21:30, they arrived over Alexandria and began attacking ships, but unsuccessfully. The departure airport had only 1,000 m (3,280 ft) of runway for takeoff, so two of the fuel tanks were left empty to reduce weight, giving an endurance of five hours for a 4.33 hour journey. Only Buscaglia and Dequal returned with torps dropped, both aircraft badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire (so much fot he claim that RN AA was not effective) . Buscaglia landed on only one wheel, with some other damage. The other three SM.79s, attacking after the first two, were hindered by a fierce anti-aircraft defence and returned to their base without releasing their torpedoes (again, so much for RN AA not being effective). However, all three ran out of fuel and were forced to jettison the torpedoes which exploded in the desert, and then force-landed three hours after the attack. Two crews were rescued later, but the third (Fusco's) was still in Egypt when they force-landed. The crew set light to their aircraft the next morning, which alerted the British who then captured them. These failures were experienced within a combat radius of only about 650 km (400 mi), in clear contrast with the glamorous performances of the racer Sparvieros just a few years before. This is something to bear ionm mind about the SM79, its radius in combat loading was far more restricted and hence of limited value in a British isles scenario.


Many missions followed, on 22–23 August (Alexandria - no hits), 26 August (against ships never found), and 27 August (Buscaglia against a cruiser, no results). The special unit became known as the 278th Squadriglia, and from September 1940 carried out many shipping attacks, including on 4 September (when Buscaglia had his aircraft damaged by fighters) and 10 September, when Robone claimed a merchant ship sunk (one might have been damaged, but records are unclear, on balance a hit was unlikely). The Italians were learning, but were not yet effective, and were only available in miniscule numbers) . On 17 September, after another unsuccessful day attack, Buscaglia and Robone returned at night, attacking the British ships that shelled Bardia. One torpedo hit HMS Kent, damaging the heavy cruiser to the extent that the ship remained under repair until September 1941 ( this was their first real successafter more than 100 sorties). After almost a month of attacks, this was the first success officially acknowledged and proven. After almost a month of further attacks, a newcomer, Erasi, flew with Robone on 14 October 1940 against a British formation and hit HMS Liverpool, a modern cruiser that lost her bow and needed 13 months of repair. After several months, and despite the losses and the first unfortunate mission, the core of the 278th was now operating at near full strength of 9 a/c, but thats laughable to calim that might make a difference to the shipping wars around Britain. . The last success of this squadron for 1940 was at Suda Bay, Crete, when Buscaglia damaged another cruiser, HMS Glasgow, despite the anti-torpedo netting surrounding the ship, sending it out of commission for nine months while repairs were made. The fact that Buscaglia managed to aim his torpedo so as to pass between the nets is proff of their improving skill and potency, but that was in December.....

The premise of this what if is that the germans win the battle, not that they would win it with the forces historically fielded. For the germans to win, they would need to do a lot of thngs differntly and the british react in increadibly stupid ways for this ever to occur. The chances of that are very slim in my opinion.

parsifal said:

The premise of this what if is that the germans win the battle, not that they would win it with the forces historically fielded. For the germans to win, they would need to do a lot of thngs differntly and the british react in increadibly stupid ways for this ever to occur. The chances of that are very slim in my opinion.

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Sadly, many different armed forces do many stupid thing in an amazing variety of ways, and it becomes most tragic when they know better and keep on doing it (Vietnam).

And its the rank-and-file - and too often civilians - who really pay the the price. (how's that for an obvious statement?!)

Id agree, however in this case all the evidence of a botched campaign is in the german camp. More or less everythig they did and had was wrong for this campaign. target chooices, lack of proper targetting policies, escort resrtiction, limited endurance, weight of bombs, reserves and rediness rates, you name it, they got it wrong.

I suppose, in a twisted kind of way, one could argue that the British could scarcely have done more than they did, whilst the germans could do a whole lot of things better that might well have given them a better result. But the Germans, whilst making mistake after mistake,, were far from a stupid people. They tended to make those "mistakes" for a reason.

Luck and stupidity does play its part in wars. But Im a great fan of Asimovs "Foundation" series, in which in the future, humanity was able to refine its mathematical analyses such that it could predict to the last detail what was going to happen. Dowding was heading in that direction in 1940....his battle was planned and measured, and whilst the outcome was in doubt, the unknown variables in his war were less than the unknown variables in the germans war. and its the unkown variables that produce the unknown or unforeseen result. that and political interference with the soldiers' assessments (for Vietnam for example)

Well summarised Parsifal. The Germans lost the Battle of Britain as much as the British won it.

The Germans made a lot of errors in the initial campaign due to a lack of intelligence. The oft touted disastrous switch to attack London was a tactical mistake (originally proposed by the Luftwaffe as a means of forcing the RAF to fight) later carried out with a political objective in mind.

The British made plenty of mistakes. Dowding's system was by his own admission "not perfect". I've already touched on the tactical delays caused by his insistence on centralised "filtering". There were long standing arguments about such things as basic as the armament of the RAF's fighters and then the synchronisation of what they had. Dowding was a bit of a "hobby manager". He never intervened decisively in the on going row between Park and Leigh Mallory, not least because his views on Leigh Mallory's proposed big wing tactics were much more sympathetic than the simplistic post war explanations would allow. This cost lives on occasions when 11 Group airfields were left undefended.

Training was pathetic, not just for air crew but the operators of Chain Home.

In October 1939 J.A.J. Tester, commanding the RDF school at Bawdsey reported to the Air Ministry that.

"Operators currently leave the school with little or no idea of the following points which are considered essential. (1) the R.F.type of receiver. (2)The anti jamming devices. (3) Multiple raids. (4) Plotting and filtering. (6) Counting.

The rest of the report makes for depressing reading. Despite his recommendation that the course should be longer it was shortened.

A report by E C Williams of the Stanmore Research Section, which was responsible for investigating the RDF chain's performance in 1940, days before the "Adlerangriff" was damning. Standards were "lower than they have ever been". This was due to the shortening of the Radio School Course, sending "completely untrained personnel to the chain" and employing "totally unsuited personnel." Personnel were being trained by half trained operators and he concluded that " a large part of the efficiency of the RDF chain is lost by poor operators, whose course of training has been curtailed."

As late as December 1940 Watson-Watt wrote to Sinclair at the Air Ministry saying.

"we have not yet proportioned our efforts in the installation of RDF coastal stations to the size and urgency of our programme."

Once again the myth and the reality are very different. The rate at which interceptions were actually made following detection of raids is contentious, but may be lower than 50%.

I think it was Calder who wrote that "the negative effects of the myth on British societies have almost worked themselves out."
Reading some posts here I would have to disagree!

Once again, it's a good job that the Germans didn't know any of this.

Cheers

Steve

Well this is a bit incorrect, I recommend Stephen's Bungay's "Most Dangerous Enemy' to fill in some blanks.

stona said:

The Germans made a lot of errors in the initial campaign due to a lack of intelligence. The oft touted disastrous switch to attack London was a tactical mistake (originally proposed by the Luftwaffe as a means of forcing the RAF to fight) later carried out with a political objective in mind.

The British made plenty of mistakes. Dowding's system was by his own admission "not perfect". I've already touched on the tactical delays caused by his insistence on centralised "filtering". There were long standing arguments about such things as basic as the armament of the RAF's fighters and then the synchronisation of what they had. Dowding was a bit of a "hobby manager". He never intervened decisively in the on going row between Park and Leigh Mallory, not least because his views on Leigh Mallory's proposed big wing tactics were much more sympathetic than the simplistic post war explanations would allow. This cost lives on occasions when 11 Group airfields were left undefended.

Not sure where to start with this. The filtering worked fine, it was very fast, it was certainly fast enough for Park to make (and change) tactical decisions on the fly during raids.
Dowding was a dedicated professional for decades, instrumental at every point (thank god for the man) for the critical decisions made (fighters, radar, C&C, guns on fighters [thank you Sorley], et al). In many ways FC was his entire creation, the weapons and the systems.
Though he did admit, later, that not sorting out that prat Leigh Mallory was a mistake, but he delegated and trusted his commanders to be adults. Park was one, LM was not.


Training was pathetic, not just for air crew but the operators of Chain Home.

The radar operators were actually very good, the basic training of pilots (and navigators, etc) was poor ..as was the Luftwaffe's at the time .. and don't even go near the US's efforts at the time.
The excellent skills of Luftwaffe pilots in the BoB was not reflection of their training regime in war, rather that pre-war it was very good and operational training, near the front line, was excellent .. until the pressure built up and they couldn't do it any longer and they too threw completely untrained pilots into battle, with predictable results.

Unlike the Wehrmacht basic training was always poor and got worse over time and, unlike the British and their own soldier cousins, they got no rest or breaks. They were expected to fight until death. Part of this was that, unlike the rest of the German military, the Luftwaffe was purely a NAZI creation and ran by the number 2 NAZI politician in Germany. They were expected to be 'warrior kings', fight without rest, until death and all that nonsense.

The untrained ones got just as quickly slaughtered as the untrained ones in the British/US/USSR/etc ones did.

The radar (etc) operators did very well Bungay notes some of the few times when they got misled. Plus they were backed (always forgotten) by the Observer Corps and by putting observer planes up to actually have a look (always Spits of course). The filtering system was designed to bring together the different strands of data into sensible information (sense from chaos in effect).

If you look at the day by record of the BoB it is amazing how few times the British got conned. And the Germans always tried to con them into getting caught in a 'fighter trap'.


In October 1939 J.A.J. Tester, commanding the RDF school at Bawdsey reported to the Air Ministry that.

"Operators currently leave the school with little or no idea of the following points which are considered essential. (1) the R.F.type of receiver. (2)The anti jamming devices. (3) Multiple raids. (4) Plotting and filtering. (6) Counting.

The rest of the report makes for depressing reading. Despite his recommendation that the course should be longer it was shortened.

A report by E C Williams of the Stanmore Research Section, which was responsible for investigating the RDF chain's performance in 1940, days before the "Adlerangriff" was damning. Standards were "lower than they have ever been". This was due to the shortening of the Radio School Course, sending "completely untrained personnel to the chain" and employing "totally unsuited personnel." Personnel were being trained by half trained operators and he concluded that " a large part of the efficiency of the RDF chain is lost by poor operators, whose course of training has been curtailed."

As late as December 1940 Watson-Watt wrote to Sinclair at the Air Ministry saying.

"we have not yet proportioned our efforts in the installation of RDF coastal stations to the size and urgency of our programme."

Yes there were issues at first, an example is the famous 'battle of Barking Creek' but they were very (very) quickly learned from them and by the time they were put to the test the Germans were facing a very well oiled machine

Once again the myth and the reality are very different. The rate at which interceptions were actually made following detection of raids is contentious, but may be lower than 50%.

I think it was Calder who wrote that "the negative effects of the myth on British societies have almost worked themselves out."
Reading some posts here I would have to disagree!

Once again, it's a good job that the Germans didn't know any of this.

Yes but they lost and lost badly in the BoB, in fact I think it is fair to say they were thumped

Cheers

Steve

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parsifal said:

Luck and stupidity does play its part in wars. But Im a great fan of Asimovs "Foundation" series, in which in the future, humanity was able to refine its mathematical analyses such that it could predict to the last detail what was going to happen. Dowding was heading in that direction in 1940....his battle was planned and measured, and whilst the outcome was in doubt, the unknown variables in his war were less than the unknown variables in the germans war. and its the unkown variables that produce the unknown or unforeseen result. that and political interference with the soldiers' assessments (for Vietnam for example)

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It should be noted that the RAF had been working since 1915 (the date of the first bombing attack on Britain) on the tactics and methods needed to fight this type of battle, while Germany was forced to work out the tactics and methods in the few weeks after the fall of France

It should be noted that the RAF had been working since 1915

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It was actually the Admiralty that was first tasked with the air defence of the UK from September 3 1914 for the first year or so of the war; one of the very first measures was a naval airman Eric Bentley Beauman and a Caudron G.3 at the London Aerodrome at Hendon and a search light, but the Caudron was unarmed! This was London's sole means of air defence for a time! In mid 1915 he went up to Edinburgh and was based 20 miles outside of the city, where a searchlight was located with a handful of Sopwith Tractor Biplanes (named 'Spinning Jennies' due to their tendency to enter into a nasty spin without warning) and Avro 504s at a makeshift camp in East Lothian. The Admiralty relinquished its defence responsibilities to the War Office in mid 1915.

The first German air attacks on the UK took place in December 1914 when seaplanes from the Zeebrugge seaplane station bombed Dover - the first attack was against Dover Pier.