The 190's boogeyman status may have been the way the RAF perceived it, but it was without any factual foundation.
Hooton notes that between June - December 1941 RAF FC lost 416 fighters in six months during 20 495 day sorties flown (2 % loss rate), plus BC's 108 bombers in 1406 sorties (7.6 % loss rate...!).
This was pretty much the 109F period, just before the JGs started to convert to the 190A. Luftflotte 3 was flying 19535 sorties but lost only 93 fighters (0.4 % loss rate)..
The numbers pretty much speak for themselves - 4 RAF fighters and a bomber was lost for every German fighter . RAF fighter command at the time was however believed that it had shot down over 700 German fighters.
In the next six months (January - June 1942), when the Fw 190 was making appearance, the RAF lost another 295 fighters in 22 729 (1.2% loss rate) day sorties while BC flew 1007 day sorties and lost only 16 (1.5% loss rate).
It's quite clear that the first six months of Fw 190ish 1942 was much easier on the RAF than the previous six months of 1941. 109F equipped JGs were kicking the brown out of Fighter Command in 1941 much worse than 190As did in 1942. Fighter Command's losses did not, as you'd believe, increase in 1942. In fact they were decreasing, but the RAF had enough. Similar losses for the same period for the Jagdwaffe are not available, but Hooton notes that in the four months leading to June 1942, RAF FC has lost 264 fighters for 58 German - a ratio of
To summerize:
In the second half of 1941 the Germans, largely equipped with 109Fs shot down 416 RAF fighters and 108 bombers, for the loss of 93 of their own fighters - a loss ratio of 5.6 to one!
In the four months leading to June 1942 the Germans, largely re-equipped with 190As shot down 264 RAF fighters and about a dozen bombers, for the loss of 58 of their own fighters - a loss ratio of 4.7 to one!
Thus actually the LW was doing relatively worse with the 190 (meaning that they 'only' shot down about 5 RAF planes for each of their own instead of 6..) and Fighter Command actually slightly better.
All that happened that the RAF was slow to realize it. It took them a year and a number of high profile engagements in the spring of 1942, when JGs practically annihilated a number of Spitfire Squadrons in combat: on 1st June 1942 9 Spitfires of the Debden wing were shot down, the next day seven out of 12 Spitfires of No. 403 Sqn were shot down by JG.
This must have rose some heads in the air ministry and Dougles was told to stop this nonsense over France at once. The RAF began to realize the reality of the situation that was going on for a year and they finally had enough of the hammering they received over France - either from 109Fs or 190As.
They may have perceived that this was caused by the 190s, but with the hindsight it seems it was an easy excuse for everyone, since essentially it was the failure of the tactics and lack of concept, aka the human factor. Surely post-war historians were keen to build on that. After all, 'the Fw 190 menace' and blaming it all on a supposedly unbeatable uberfighter sounds a whole lot nicer in the history books than 'we were banging our head against the concreate hoping it would yield and it took us a year to realize this was a stupid concept'.
So, in short your earlier statement that 'RAF only started to suffer losses which they considered unsustainable after the introduction of the Fw 190' is demonstrably untrue.
As for the June 24th 1941 the minutes of a meeting of the Air Staff regarding the Merlin 61 and having Verney resisting any change to the Spitfire V and making the "This [Spitfire V] is the mainstay of the Spitfire first line strength for it is proving superior to the Me 109 and we cannot run any risks with it."
I cannot comment anything else on it that given the above, Verney either had his own reasons for sticking to the Mark V or he had a bad case of overusing mushrooms. To be fair, he might have erred in believing the fanciful claims of pilots over France, after all if those were to be true, the RAF would have been shooting down the LW in a 2 to one rate over France.
But he seems to be rather alone with his opinion. Shacklady for example quotes a signal from the Wing Commander of the Hornchurch wing on 15 July 1941, 'listing the essentials if the Spitfire was to cope with the 109'. He noted the following, regarding the superiority of the 109F at altitude, which was a great concern for RAF fighter pilots appearantly (and it would seem logical that this lead to fitting a high altitude bomber engine to the Mark V and thus renamed Mark IX):
"Reserve of power and manoeuvrability are the foremost requirements for efficient air fighting at great heights. The superiority in this respect of the 109, particularly the 109F must, to a large extent, be due to its light weight. At present the Spitfire V has insufficient reserves of power to stay in combat with the 109 at 35 000 feet. The latter definietely has greater speed at that height on the level, climb or dive."
BTW he also clearly uses '109' for 109E and 109F for the latter. In fact this was expressively requested to avoid confusing the two.
