If the RAF had been defeated in the Battle of Britain

Filtering did not work fine. Official reports concluded that centralised filtering built in a delay of up to four minutes. This might not seem much, but a raid travelling at a conservative 175 mph will travel about thirteen miles in that time. Given that most men who flew in the battle reckon that a good pilot could see enemy aircraft at a range of up to three miles this is disastrous to the chances of interception.
Even the MoD narrative, which largely supports the received version of events, concedes that in the quiet period leading up to December 1940 the filtering system was "still giving much trouble."

The Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Philip Joubert was appointed by Newall (Chief of Air Staff) to "investigate the RDF chain from the point of view of service control." His report was supposed to form the basis of a discussion on RDF policy but Dowding simply threw his toys out of the pram, faced with some of its content. He called it innacurate and accused Joubert of being "imperfectly acquainted with all aspects of the problem." In so doing conceding that there was in fact a problem. Dowding admitted there were delays often in order to avoid "nugatory flights" but refused to concede that there had been missed interceptions, despite evidence from his own squadrons. Newall wanted experiments carried out, devolving filtering from HQ to Group. Dowding would have none of it and without proper explanation opposed it on the grounds that this would be "thoroughly unsound and would lead to a grave loss of operational efficiency." His one modification was to have the "first arrow (plaque) told (relayed) to Groups and Sectors with an identity (friend or foe) added when established." My explanations in brackets. He seems to have believed that only he knew how his system worked and that the Air Ministry should concentrate on improving his equipment. This is not how the UK services work, they are run by committees, like boards of management, not individual officers.

There is a file in our national archives labelled "Present Filtering Organisation." It claims that there were missed interceptions in this relatively quiet period and that since the filter room had been located at Fighter Command HQ there had been a decrease in filtering efficiency and an overlap of function between NCO filterers and filter officers. The author (unknown) does stress that this is not meant to be an indictment of the system but is due to the rapid expansion of the RDF chain. Despite the improvement in instrument quality the operators now had "much less average ability than they previously possessed."

On 31st January 1940 Dowding wrote to the Air Ministry attempting to lay out reasons why he felt filtering should remain at Fighter Command HQ. This is something he had now had time to think about following his failure to do so at the meeting with Newall. He gives some valid reasons and also warns against the cost of locating new filter rooms underground as they would now be at Group and Sector stations.
Unfortunately he concluded in a way guaranteed to annoy members of the Air Staff, contributing to his own downfall ten months later.

"My contention is that members of the Air Council have the right to tell me what to do but should not insist on telling me how to do it so long as I retain their confidence."

With this back me or sack me attitude Dowding won a reprieve and the Air Council backed down. The question of filtering would not be raised again for several months. The dispute was so acrimonious that later in 1940 Dowding had involved Churchill who backed Dowding at the time but asked Sinclair to investigate.
In October 1940 it was Joubert who replied to the Prime Minister. The Air Ministry he said was,

"unconvinced of the rightness of the C-inC's views......but decided not to press him further at that time." In September "The question of decentralisation of filtering very naturally was reconsidered". The only real advantage of filtering at Fighter Command HQ was the presence of liaison officers from other commands, but only until IFF apparatus became generally available in operational aircraft.

It was the Committee on Night Defence, chaired by Sir John Salmond, which finally recommended "the operation of filtering should be transferred from Fighter Command HQ to Group Headquarters in order to reduce delay " My italics.

Dowding objected yet again saying that the issue had been "disinterred" and he asked that he "may be spared the necessity of discussing the question afresh." He did list his objections and, because he knew he had lost the battle, had them placed on record. It was impractical until IFF was fitted to all operational aircraft. The filtering still could not be done on the operational table but in separate filter rooms which had to be excavated and built. This was, he considered, a waste of resources and money and represented a reduction in efficiency.

I really don't have time to reproduce here all the arguments but even Dowding conceded that the decentralisation might achieve "a very small saving in time" launching fighters but due to the delay in sending information to Fighter Command (which was the reverse of his system) there would be a "delay in the issue of air raid warnings." That sounds like a man grasping at straws.

As for the efficiency of the RDF chain and it's operators, I can only point you at the official reports from which I quoted above.
An operation requirement report of June 1940 stated that

"interception over the sea usually failed because Chain Home was not accurate enough and Chain Home Low had no capability to measure height as it had originally been designed as a Coastal Defence Set."

Filterers would often receive wildly conflicting reports of a raid's altitude from two separate RDF stations. They would have to make an educated guess as to which was most likely to be correct.

Even Watson-Watt admitted in his memoirs that the very range of Chain Home sometimes caused errors.

"It was sometimes made more misleading by our very success, because the first height reports might be on formations which had not yet completed their climb to operational height."

The personnel problems went on well into 1941, when Canadian radio officers and mechanics rescued the system from "serious difficulties."

Bungay is either being disingenuous or has not thoroughly researched the personnel and operation of Chain Home in 1940/41. I have already posted some elements of a report by the man in charge of training these people. It gets worse.

The school lacked a "complete dummy RDF system for training purposes." Mechanics training was described as "a lamentable state of affairs."

Trainees graduated with a good theoretical but a poor practical knowledge of "(1) Any transmitter. (2) Any receiver with the exception of the mobile one. (3) Any work culminating in the equipment actually going on air. (4) Phasing. (5) Stand-by powere equipment. (6) GM." GM may mean general maintenance or possibly geometric mean in this context.

It makes you wonder what they actually could do. If the man in charge of training was writing this I find your contention that "the radar operators were actually very good" difficult to accept.

A well oiled machine it most certainly was not.

Cheers

Steve

I think if anyone believes either side in the BoB was a well oiled, well trained, efficient and professional military machine your in for a disappointment!

stona said:

A well oiled machine it most certainly was not.

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But it was a machine that was far in advance of anybody else's, and it worked well enough for the RAF to win.

Perfection is the enemy of "good enough" and Fighter Command certainly WAS good enough in the summer of 1940.

buffnut453 said:

Perfection is the enemy of "good enough" and Fighter Command certainly WAS good enough in the summer of 1940.

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Good enough to hold out for two months.....just.

Dowding did some great work before the war and during but the myth that he was somehow infallible, a great commander, is just that. Park really was an officer on the top of his game. He didn't have the huge burden of responsibility that his C-in-C carried, but his handling of 11 Group was outstandingly good.

I don't want to diminish the effort of Fighter Command or its commanders, nor would I minimise the gallantry of the men who fought at the sharp end. I've already said that Dowding is one of my personal heroes, for all his faults. What I object to is the mythologizing of the battle and the hagiography around Dowding and Park in particular. It is not helpful and a more balanced appraisal is difficult, even now, in the face of the myth. That has been shown in some of the responses in this thread. The real story is different, much more exciting, and the evidence has been available for many years.
Cheers
Steve

Hello Steve
thanks a lot for interesting info!
But as you know, if one had to expand an organization very fast, the quality of personel tended to drop. It was very common to complain in all armed forces that the hasty trained drafted/ for war-service only personel were not generally same quality than pre-war professionals. And every branch wanted, if I may use the Finnish Army terms, A1 men or at least A2s. But when a nation mobilized for total war, many B1s and B2s also got drafted and there were enough A men for all trades. So where one put all the B men, they were not suitable to pilots etc front line duties, not even to "bloody infantry". So they were trained to 2nd -line duties, not so dangerous and hard than 1st-line service but usually important tasks for the organization. But probably the branch chiefs would have liked more the A1 men.

Juha

Sorry for this short and easy comment especially in front of the many valuable ones here, but I once read it in Le Fanatique de l'Aviation (a good magazine) in their conclusive paragraph on the matter :
The Germans lost the BofB (air) because they failed to aknowledge that they had won it ; the British won because they maintained they had not lost it (yet).

It's a bit easy a sentence but it fits. And what a difference with the Battle of France.
As for the aftermaths of an eventual RAF collapse, I'd stick to pattle's #302 comment : a stalemate. Strategical.

l'Omnivore Sobriquet said:

The Germans lost the BofB (air) because they failed to aknowledge that they had won it ; the British won because they maintained they had not lost it (yet).
.

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The LW lost (or didnt win) because there aim was to destroy the RAF. The RAF won (or didnt lose) by not being destroyed.

Hello l'OS
IMHO LW was not winning, especially because Jagdwaffe was running out combat ready fighter pilots faster than FC. On 29 June 1940 the total Jagdwaffe strength was 1,107 aircraft with 856 operational and 1,126 pilots of whom 906 were combat ready. As of 28 September there were 1,132 aircraft with 920 operational, but only 917 pilots of whom 676 were combat ready. Without enough combat ready fighter pilots it would not have been possible to win air superiority over Southern England.

Juha

An extract from the nearby discussion about "Did the LW achieve air superiority over the 8th AF after the Schweinfurt missions? ", comment #26 page 2 :

The BoB was an interesting parrallel to 1944, but with a vitally different epitaph. The Germans had air superiority at the start, but lost it as the full effects of Dowdings air denial campaign bit in deep. Here we see the fundamentally different dynamic of the germans in 1940 versus the Americans in 1944, and it brings it sharply home as to why you cant rely on losses as to a measure of air superiority. The Germans took such heavy losses in 1940 that they had to abandon their primary objectives....thats tantamount to losing air superiority. And they never really regained it. Losses led to the loss of air superiority, but it was not the loses per se that triggered or signalled the loss of air superiority, it was the abandonment of the mission objectives that did that

For the Americans in 1943, the losses led to the pause in operations, followed by a change in tactics, but never really an abandonment of the mission objectives. They rapidly came back to resume their mission. Is that a loss of air superiority? Does a tactical setback equate to or amount to a strategic defeat? It can be certainly argued that way, with some validity, but I tend to think not. A tactical defeat does not, in my view amount to a loss of air superiority unless it can be shown that the overall mission objectives have been abandoned, or so modified as to bear no resemblance or relevance to the prime objectives.

Click to expand...

This explaines well what I put shortly in the Fana's (the magazine) quote up above. In BoB the LW may well have had, overall, a bloody strain on its effectives, but it was a RAF crushing machine nonetheless, as the FC had to keep on defending the vital South-East part of its country. At that stage, the middle of the battle, the LW was furthermore enjoying better pilots losses vs the RAf than the overall figure Juha (hello!) gives. But it is not really the point.
The Lufwaffe changed its strategy, its aim (to central London blitz), and eventually changed it again (night blitz.) And according to the statement above it is this and not the losses, that lead to the loosing of air superiority
The abandon of primary objective did it. Signed it.
This is what should be read in the (coarse) sentence : "the German lost because they failed to acknowledge they [were winning] it."

Even though the very losses were, psychologically more than effectively (LW had lengthy reserves at this pace), part of the decision to indeed abandon primary target before its fullfilment.

I reckon the above quote should be put back into context to become really convincing. A long discussion about what air superiority is, compared to air denial, local air superiority etc., and the military consequences of these.

stona said:

A well oiled machine it most certainly was not.

Cheers

Steve

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i think after all his success hitler didnt think the BoB would be that contested. i believe he felt if he put enough pressure he could have come to some sort of truce or cease fire...since britian was the last man standing from the alliance. and prior the fall of france i think the uk was optomistic about their stance and didnt gear up as much as they should of / could of. after the fall of france it was an "Oh $#!T" moment with a huge amount of crisis management dictating their defensive strategy. i dont think either side was ready or understood the complete situation as it stood.

Sorry Stona I have to disagree pretty much entirely, both from what actually happened and from a theoretical point of view (cybernetics).

Joubert really didn't know what he was talking about, which given his background was understandable, he should have just shut up about it. This was the man after all that blocked the Leigh Light being used for 6 months (though he did admit later that he was wrong about it, unlike some he did learn from experience).

The issue of whether filtering is centralised or decentralised and why being centralised is better is simple to explain (apart from the obvious massive multiplication of resources required):

Information was coming in from all areas, such as a radars outside a particular Group's boundary. Plus the Observer Corp. Spotter planes, squadrons engaged, et al.
The Luftwaffe was not obliging enough to always take a route to a target in one Group while carefully avoiding another. They did cross 11 Group to get into 12 Group's area and vice versa on the return. They did the same with 10 Group too.

Taking a simple example, 10 and 11 Groups as a 'thought experiment'.

Each Group HQ would have to receive all the radar stations inputs (in their own area and outside it) simultaneously plus the Observer Corp input, plus other info from aircraft (their own Group's ones or not).
Without ALL the information their own filtering will be incorrect. If 10 group only gets data from the radar stations in its own area, then it will miss raids coming in that cross from 11 Group.
So immediately we have a communications issue with duplication of all the info. Given that most of the info was by phone (or basic teleprinter), the radar stations (etc) have to contact 2 places.
Then we have the issue of (say) how a spotter plane gets the into to everyone. It contacts its Sector station giving them info, this now has to pass it on to 11 Group HQ AND 10 Group. Or it only passes it on to 11 Group HQ which has to pass it onto 10 Group HQ (as well as FC too of course).

You start to see the problems coming up, everyone has to contact everyone else and quickly, because only with ALL of the information, whether it comes from within your Group or not can you interpret it properly. Otherwise you will have blank spots.

Then we have the interpretation of the data, say (somehow) we do manage to create a comms system that can achieve all this (basically invent an early internet?).
Each Group requires all the staff and systems that FC HQ has to filter it properly. And all really good and as experienced as each other.
What happens when they differ in their view? This is a recipe for chaos. One thinks that a raid is going towards X, the other thinks it is going towards Y.... One Group calls the other for assistance, which refuses it because it believes that the raid is going elsewhere.

Then how do you coordinate handover between groups a raid passes through (say) 11 Group onto a target in 10 Group and then returns? As I said a recipe for chaos and total stuff ups.

And it will almost certainly be slower than a single filtering point in many cases. Think about it, data goes to FC HQ, filtered and passed down to Group HQs. Filtering takes time.
Now we have this decentralised system, each group doing all its own filtering, fair to presume that the time it takes will be a constant.

Taking the simple example again:
Data goes simultaneously into 10 11 Group HQs. The raid passes through 11 Group's area onto a target in 10 Group. The information from planes in the air goes to 11 Group, which then passes it onto (either directly or indirectly) 10 Group, which goes through it's own filtering system... You now have 2 filtering steps in the process.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Add in 12 Group to the mix and chaos would be kind word for the sort of mess that would ensue.

Centralised filtering was, overall quicker in most (but I will agree not all) circumstances.
It used less valuable resources of skilled people.
It meant communications was far simpler (and more robust too).
It meant there was a common view right across the organisation of what was happening .. in other words you had clarity and focus.
Tweaking and improving the filtering needed to be done at only one point. You need more people? Then it is only for a single place, rather than 3 or 4.
There was a single set of people getting steadily more and more experienced, poor performers could be easily replaced.
The 'stuff up' potential was decreased.

You can do this as a diagram or even if you were that keen a simulation model.

Perhaps this is a very obvious point but it seems to have been overlooked by some. I don't believe it is possible judge the outcome of an air battle in the same way as it is possible to judge the outcome of a land battle, the difference being is that land battles decide who holds territory not air battles, territory can be held without an air force but not without an army as there always has to be boots on the ground. Britain was never going to be defeated from the air alone in 1940 anymore than Germany was 1945, perhaps Hitler never understood this in the summer of 1940 but he certainly understood this by the autumn of 1940.
Everything that Hitler did in the west prior to 1941 was only done to lay the ground for his attack on Russia and Hitler's mistake was in losing sight of this. Hitler moved straight to his pudding before finishing his meat and veg, and as we all know once you have moved to sweet you can not return to savoury.

Well Oldsceptic, we'll just have to assume that you and Dowding are correct and everyone else on the Air Staff was wrong and leave it at that.

Your thought experiment is essentially an illustration of Dowding's key argument. In paragraph six of his January 31st 1940 letter he explained that sometimes Groups delegated tactical control to Sectors, and a raid appearing on the table more than a hundred miles away may make several alterations in course, making it seem that several targets were to be attacked. Each sector might then scramble squadrons unnecessarily. There's a lot of ifs buts and maybes in what was his best argument and it obviously failed to convince the Air Council, just as it fails to convince me seventy odd years later.

You are underestimating the role that Group controllers already had in the centralised system, as well as their ability, in support of your argument

Even authors who have contributed to the hagiographies of Dowding (most recently Vincent Orange) have conceded this point.

"In short, Dowding was as unimpressed by the committees recommendations as its members were by his blunt rejection of most of them. Their exchanges ran on into October. It now seems that Dowding was wrong on some points and unwise, at least, to correspond directly with Churchill about them. It was sensible, despite Dowding's opposition, to decentralise filtering from Bentley Priory to Groups."

Orange continues that it is a great tribute to Dowding that the issue of filtering, and Dowding's refusal to decentralise it to Group level, is the only aspect of the air defence system he had designed which came under constant criticism. This is true and speaks for Dowding's greatest achievement, nobody would deny him this.
Of course Salmond eventually won the argument, but only after Dowding's authority had been eroded by his failure to counter night bombing, an impossible task, beyond him or anybody else with the technology available in 1940.

As for a decentralised system being slower, everyone, including Dowding, allowed that it would be quicker. Official estimates vary from thirty seconds to four minutes quicker.

The RAF, Dowding and Park in particular won the Battle of Britain. This was in no small measure due to the work done by Dowding before the war. His air defence system worked well enough, as someone else pointed out. It was not perfect by his own admission. It suffered from problems of technology and training but we must remember how new this all was at the time. It just about did the job despite this.

The Battle for Britain was never fought because the Germans were well aware that any attempt at an invasion would have been defeated by the Royal Navy, however parlous a state the Royal Air Force might have been in.

A central tenet of the myth is that the RAF saved Britain from invasion and that I find to be untrue.

Cheers

Steve

The Luftwaffe weren't winning, that was the problem, FC ended the BoB with more aircraft than it started with, pilot training was coming under control, tactics were evolving!

Turning on London was not the "Strategic disaster" in reality as they were failing to destroy FC air fields anyway, poor intelligence had them attacking CC bases and training fields in some cases, I believe only 2 sector stations were out of action for more than a day throughout the entire battle.
The RAF had reserves in the West and North (much to the consternation of the Norwegian based KG) if the situation became really desperate, and had the ability to fall back and keep fighting if needed, at no time did the Luftwaffe really have the RAF on the ropes, In fact it was the Luftwaffe who was suffering unacceptable losses primarily in bomber crew, every aircraft lost over the UK was a pilot lost, many RAF pilots flew the same day they were shot down!

The reality is the Luftwaffe were not equipped to win that battle, if fighter command had entered the battle with the tactics the Luftwaffe learned over Spain it would have been an appalling defeat for the Luftwaffe, luckily for them the old men at the air ministry kept FC flying round in "rows of idiots" far too long, but as in every war, it's the painful lessons that are learnt the fastest!

Steve, the official requirement was for a sector to get one plot per minute per raid. Note that was a sector.Not sure how much faster you could get.

but only after Dowding's authority had been eroded by his failure to counter night bombing

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That was an excuse for other internal political wrangling. Dowding had specified and started building all the things to deal with that. Airborne radar, Beaufighters, et al.

Nah, the little boys wanted to come put to play, they wanted their own playpen and there was this big adult in their way, telling them what a bunch of clowns they were.
Portal, Douglas, Leigh Mallory (later Harris) ... and the rest .. didn't exactly set the World on fire with their great decisions after Dowding (and Park) were gone.

RV Jones with his tale of the the BC SASO he finally got to (Harris would never see him) trying to save some BC crews lives by getting a Mosquito to do a German radar freq job, while this idiot only wanted to talk about model trains... The poor sods in a Wellington (a Wellington!!!!) got shot to bits actually doing it (months .. and many BC crews lives later).

As for the Air Ministry, well where do we start on them ... the list is endless of their desperate attempts to lose the war (not just the air war .. the war in total).

Freeman (who was actually anti-Dowding in 1940 and was probably a part of the plot to get rid of him .... and it was a political plot) said in '44, "after Dowding all we had were pygmies".

So we have a bunch of incompetent clowns vs Dowding, who had been right (including night defence) all the time.

I think I'll pick Dowding, though I have other info in that Operations Research got created then, mostly with FC (though later applied elsewhere). And I have read the accounts of the scientists involved in creating the whole C&C system .. and the fights they had, though never with Dowding, who was their champion, just with ignorant people.

So who am I going to believe ... them? Believe Portal who lied (and probably went to his grave) fighting against a LR fighter right to bitter end, who sabotaged VLR Liberators being given to Coastal Command. I mean the man was worth 20 divisions of troops to the Germans and a 100, at least, U-Boats. Leigh Mallory an idiot, but a very good political player to the end, Douglas who loved his Defiants (he wanted more of them, much more) and didn't even have the slightest conception of what leadership was.

All of them quite happy to squander huge amounts of pilots and crews to their own ... bizarre political ends (model trains again).

After Dowding the torch of using the RAF for something sort of vaguely (instead of talking about model trains) useful passed to Tedder, Conningham and Broadhurst ... and of course Park again .. who were all far away from the RAF's higher command and the Air Ministry, though the latter tried their hardest to sabotage them. They fought their hardest to stop any Spitfires going to Malta and North Africa, only Churchill overruled them (finally) on that, and they still dragged their heels.

All those poor sodding pilots in (eg) NA being slaughtered in their miserable P-40s and Hurricanes against 109Fs.... They were only lucky that they were facing Marsaiile (and his ilk) who only shot down a couple of bombers in his entire career, if, for all his faults, they had faced Galland then the entire DAF would have been destroyed in a matter of weeks in mid-late 42.

OldSkeptic said:

Steve, the official requirement was for a sector to get one plot per minute per raid. Note that was a sector.Not sure how much faster you could get.

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Not relevant. You can update the plot(s) as quick as you like. The lag, or delay, was already built in.

For the rest we'll agree to disagree.

Cheers

Steve

Kryten said:

FC ended the BoB with more aircraft than it started with, pilot training was coming under control, tactics were evolving!

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Good grief! Have you actually read this thread?

The myth is indeed still strong.

Cheers

Steve

stona said:

Good grief! Have you actually read this thread?

The myth is indeed still strong.

Cheers

Steve

Click to expand...

Quoted from Stephen Bungays The Most Dangerous Enemy.

"Fighter Commands victory was decisive, Not only had it survived, it ended the battle stronger than it had ever been. On 6th July it's operational strength stood at 1259 pilots. On 2 November, the figure was 1796, an increase of over 40%."

Pilots obviously are the most critical but aircraft production ramped up and outstripped losses, so not really seeing how this is a myth?

when the Luftwaffe's task was to write down FC, to have your enemy actually stronger at the end of the battle can only be a failure, no matter how you dress it up!

Kryten said:

Quoted from Stephen Bungays The Most Dangerous Enemy.

"Fighter Commands victory was decisive, Not only had it survived, it ended the battle stronger than it had ever been. On 6th July it's operational strength stood at 1259 pilots. On 2 November, the figure was 1796, an increase of over 40%."

Pilots obviously are the most critical but aircraft production ramped up and outstripped losses, so not really seeing how this is a myth?

when the Luftwaffe's task was to write down FC, to have your enemy actually stronger at the end of the battle can only be a failure, no matter how you dress it up!

Click to expand...

Because Fighter Command was critically short of operational combat pilots. Dowding had also created "class C" squadrons which were effectively non-operational. Of the total number of pilots in Fighter Command about 440 were non-operational. The raw figures do not tell the whole story and were contradicted by no less a personage than Dowding himself. I posted what he said about this in a post way above and will repeat it here.

The Luftwaffe too had far, far more aircraft than men to fly them in 1945. Aircraft production figures mean nothing if you are not training pilots fast enough or well enough.

The problem pre-dates the battle of Britain. In an unsigned memorandum, usually presumed to be written by Newall of 3rd June 1940 it is stated that between 10th May and 24th June nearly two hundred pilots were lost, "a fifth of our most highly trained fighter pilots." The memorandum continues that "the number of pilots available per squadron is now little more than adequate to man the available aircraft. More serious is the loss of a considerable proportion of trained leaders." While many of the aircraft lost in France had been replaced "there remains a grave deficiency in pilots."

We can assume that Fighter Command had made up the short fall somewhat before the Battle of Britain really got going two months later as it was not until September that Dowding was forced as a "desperate expedient", his words, to introduce the much disliked "stabilisation system" to keep mostly 11 Group squadrons well above the average pilot strength of Fighter Command. 11 Groups average squadron pilot strength was 19, still well short of the official establishment of 26. By mid September other squadrons averaged only about 10 operational pilots.
The stabilisation system was not abandoned until the end of November 1940. It had been introduced as an operational expedient intended to last only until the OTUs could meet the wastage problem so it is reasonable to assume that this finally happened at the end of November 1940.
In August 1940 the OTUs only delivered 260 pilots to replace the 304 killed or wounded according to the Air Historical Branch Narrative of the MoD which obviously did not meet the criteria.

Bungay is simply quoting, almost word for word, the pamphlet "The Battle of Britain" published by HMSO whilst the war was still continuing. Dowding himself replied to the assertion that "the fighter squadrons of the RAF were indeed stronger at the end of the battle than at the beginning" replying, "whatever the paper return showed, the situation towards the end was extremely critical and most squadrons were fit only for operations against unescorted bombers."
I would expect better from Bungay whose writing I quite like. This is nothing new, the facts have been in the public domain for years. Some wilfully choose to ignore them.

Cheers

Steve