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Congratulations. An excellent simple explanation.
I had been trying to write something that described the operation as simply and clearly and just could not do it.
Really? I would not have thought there would be enough room.
The US developed a new, UHF, much more sophisticated IFF, the BC-645, that had all kinds of features including the ability of aircraft to interrogate each other. But the British refused to change and you can't very well have two different IFF systems. As a result the BC-645 became a common surplus item offered to radio amateurs for about the next 40 years.
Actually I don't think there is much that Dowding should change. Of all the prewar thinkers in any field he foresaw the future better than any of them. In fact he didn't just foresee the future, he created it!If you could have sent Dowding and Park back from 1941 to 1935 they would have changed many things. By that time in 1941 they knew the war started in 1939 and France fell in 1940.
I agree, but if you apply 20/20 hindsight and give Dowding Park and those concerned 5 years notice they would obviously have done better. Forget the Defiant, get the Beaufighter (or similar) in service for mid 1940. Have all factories concerned breaking ground 2 years earlier so Castle Bromwich is in full production at start 1940 making Mk IIs then Mk IIIs. Increase all production AND pilot training so that even losses in France leave you with 1000 S/E fighters. Pour more resources into Chain Home and GCI so they are all operational at start 1940. Put proper funding into Whittles jet engine and have a squadron operational in 1940, however rudimentary. If you are allowed such hindsight, the Battle of Britain probably wouldnt have started and if it did would have been over very quickly, same for any night time "Blitz". The story of when things arrived in service was in many/ most cases dependent on when work started and how many reesources they were given.Actually I don't think there is much that Dowding should change. Of all the prewar thinkers in any field he foresaw the future better than any of them. In fact he didn't just foresee the future, he created it!
Dowding never wanted the Defiant in the first place. He wasn't responsible for building factories or pilot training. He wasn't in charge of The Ministry of Aircraft Production. You're giving him responsibilities he never had. He did fund chain home. I don't what more you could expect one man to do.I agree, but if you apply 20/20 hindsight and give Dowding Park and those concerned 5 years notice they would obviously have done better. Forget the Defiant, get the Beaufighter (or similar) in service for mid 1940. Have all factories concerned breaking ground 2 years earlier so Castle Bromwich is in full production at start 1940 making Mk IIs then Mk IIIs. Increase all production AND pilot training so that even losses in France leave you with 1000 S/E fighters. Pour more resources into Chain Home and GCI so they are all operational at start 1940. Put proper funding into Whittles jet engine and have a squadron operational in 1940, however rudimentary. If you are allowed such hindsight, the Battle of Britain probably wouldnt have started and if it did would have been over very quickly, same for any night time "Blitz". The story of when things arrived in service was in many/ most cases dependent on when work started and how many reesources they were given.
It is purely a hind sight discussion, if you can give Dowding 20/20 hindsight and transport him to 1935 you can do it with everyone else. Dowding didnt make a RADAR system or a teleprinter or a telephone line or anything else in what is known as the "Dowding System" he did turn off the Hurricane tap though, and that wasnt in his remit.Dowding never wanted the Defiant in the first place. He wasn't responsible for building factories or pilot training. He wasn't in charge of The Ministry of Aircraft Production. You're giving him responsibilities he never had. He did fund chain home. I don't what more you could expect one man to do.
Wanting "early warning" is as old as military conflict, castles were built on hills and observation towers put on top. Dowding, from what I have read, was not your normal genius if he was a genius at all Chain Home RADAR (RDF) wasnt state of the art even at the time, nothing in the Dowding system was unknown AFAIK. Maybe the use of colour to represent time was a clever innovation. BUT he realised he needed a system for a pi$$ing competition. He didnt want titanium and gold pots, he didnt want complicated pots, he wanted lots of pots and thousands of people trained in the correct way to pee so they could do it 24/7, with all information handled in such a way they the section commander could have the correct people peeing in the correct place at the correct altitude.You don't know what you need until you do but Chain Home was prescient.
The discussion is about what Dowding should have done differently not how Britain should have rearmed. I can't think of anything he should have done differently. Also, please explain the Hurricane tap comment.It is purely a hind sight discussion, if you can give Dowding 20/20 hindsight and transport him to 1935 you can do it with everyone else. Dowding didnt make a RADAR system or a teleprinter or a telephone line or anything else in what is known as the "Dowding System" he did turn off the Hurricane tap though, and that wasnt in his remit.
His letter halting the sending more Hurricanes to be lost in France often referred to as "the Hurricane Tap", this left Dowding with 500 Hurricanes and Spitfires when France fell . The discussion started about what we can think up in 2024 with 20/20 hindsight about how things were done wrong or could have been done better 90 years ago. If you give Dowding any 100% certain 20/20 hindsight knowledge he would certainly have shared it with those above him. Yes, I agree it is a nonsense discussion, as is criticising people long gone, not here to defend themselves, when we know much more about what the enemy was doing and how things panned out than they did or could. We still have clowns and their number increases by the year lambasting Chamberlain for his "peace in our time" speech and piece of paper when everything Churchill used in 1940 was ordered by Chamberlain as either Prime Minister (from 1937) or Chancellor (from 1931).The discussion is about what Dowding should have done differently not how Britain should have rearmed. I can't think of anything he should have done differently. Also, please explain the Hurricane tap comment.
I agree, but if you apply 20/20 hindsight and give Dowding Park and those concerned 5 years notice they would obviously have done better. Forget the Defiant, get the Beaufighter (or similar) in service for mid 1940. Have all factories concerned breaking ground 2 years earlier so Castle Bromwich is in full production at start 1940 making Mk IIs then Mk IIIs. Increase all production AND pilot training so that even losses in France leave you with 1000 S/E fighters. Pour more resources into Chain Home and GCI so they are all operational at start 1940. Put proper funding into Whittles jet engine and have a squadron operational in 1940, however rudimentary. If you are allowed such hindsight, the Battle of Britain probably wouldnt have started and if it did would have been over very quickly, same for any night time "Blitz". The story of when things arrived in service was in many/ most cases dependent on when work started and how many reesources they were given.
HiThis requires a considerable change in RAF and Air Ministry thinking.
In an old thread on somewhat similar lines I once counted at the end of 1938(?) that the RAF had about 1000 fighters on order (including end of Gladiator production, this may be low as Spitfire orders may have been increased in 1938 to about 510) and about 4000 bombers on order. I did not count trainers or flying boats or transports. These are 1938 bombers.
We can see at that point in time, where the emphasis was. At different points in time the emphasis changed. Unfortunately some times the allocations of increased resources did NOT change the proportions of of the emphasis or not by much.
To further your last statement. There were two orders for the Stirling bomber (100 aircraft each) before the Munich agreement which were soon changed to 1500 aircraft total a short while later and expanded production to 3-4 additional factories. 1st Production Stirling flew about 1 1/2 years after Munich and the first operational mission was 2 1/2 years after Munich with three Aircraft.
The British were trying desperately to increase the size of the RAF. You need about 10 ground crew for every pilot.
Army 353
Bomb H 1417
Bomb M 2147
Bomb L 3482
Fighter 3661
GR 1229
Naval 1576
Train 5947
If you look at the various expansion plans the fighter force and the FAA remain comparable size wise.So the FAA (Naval) was getting a bit under the attention that FC (fighter defense of GB and the empire)
As the FAA was a sort of mini RAF, a mixture of fighters and bombers, the RN determining the preferred force mix, production reality determining what they had.but total FAA fighters of any sort were 566
The Gladiator orders were in part due to anticipated or actual delays in Hurricane and Spitfire production, orders were 23+186 in 1935, 16+78 in 1937 and 240 in 1938, then add the 60 Sea Gladiators in 1938. Everyone was working off WWI experience, the cycle of the need for the new drawing board design, the design in prototype trials, the design coming into production, the design in mass production, the design being phased out of production. They knew the cycle would take longer than WWI but were over confident about how much shorter it would be in wartime versus what it was in the late 1930's.The Fulmar was supposed to replace the Skua and the Sea Gladiators were only ordered because the Skua, Roc and Fulmar were all running late. Out of the 566 FAA 'fighters' ordered in the 1936-38 period only around 50-60% were intended to be in service at the same time?
Yet it could be said the RAF was doing what the RN was doing, building the more complex and harder to produce items in peace time knowing expansion of "lighter" forces was easier. The bigger the aircraft and the larger the crew the longer it took to create the force. At the same time heavy bombers tend to be more efficient in terms of the effort required per ton of bombs dropped. The British Bombing Survey Unit simply took the bombs dropped and divided that by the number of sorties sent (NOT attacked) and came up with the Bomber Command average bomb load in pounds, the second figure is per attacking sortie from the Bomber Command War Room 1945 report.Granted 1952 of the BC aircraft were single engine (not counting the Hinds and Wellesley) but with over 1400 four engine (big twin) bombers on order by the end of 1938 we can really see where the RAF was putting it's effort (money).
I have not seen any indications of pre war ideas of GR aircraft in standard bombing raids. Coastal Command certainly did quite a lot of bombing of maritime related targets as well as bombing ships, wartime total of 4,778 tons of bombs, which is ahead of Fighter Command at 3,141 tons. Then again minelaying duties started with Coastal Command, then shared with Bomber Command until 1943 when Bomber Command took over. Coastal Command units did take part in the thousand bomber raids in 1942 but it was not considered viable given things like the extra navigation training they had. It is the trade off, the more specialised the unit is the better it is at a specific task, but what happens if the task ceases to exist? How long to retrain the specialist crew and what about the equipment?There was also a bit of disingenuous about some of the numbers of BC. BC may have had plans to take over some of the GR aircraft for light bombing missions.
Now we run into things like being right for the wrong/not quite right reasons and the pre war situation of little hard evidence therefore all sides could dig in behind their preferred predictions of what was to come.Also shows the lack of support for the "army". The 400 Hawker Henley dive bomber/tactical bomber order was cut in 1/2 but even before the cut in numbers it had been transferred over to Training Command leaving the "army" without a whole lot for tactical/battle field support aircraft. The increase in orders for Lysanders is just to accommodate the increased number of British army divisions, not to increase the air support per division.
One fundamental point when looking at specific time periods is a big order could have been placed earlier, or an order delayed until later for various reasons. Hence "no order found" is possible depending on the time period chosen.The changes in numbers for the 1939 contracts do show increase support for FC
There are pictures of the side by side installation in Morgan and Shacklady. It looks like an old bedframe with two tanks suspended beneath. The drag must have been tremendous.I did make the argument about the rear tank being used to balance the heavier engine as the MkIX did have lead ballast in the tail, the MkV had the rear 29 gallon tank fitted so it was viable and George Buerling fitted his MkV he had in Malta with twin side by side drop tanks so if mods needed to be done they were. If you go back the the original question about the P51 it had all sorts of problems that presented themselves as the airframe changed, going to the bubble canopy caused fishtailing but did they say no good and stop using it, hell no, they fitted a fillet down the spine and problem solved.