There is also the question of timing. During the 30s and until 1940/41 Portal was right. An escort fighter that could take on short range interceptors was NOT possible. It became possible with with the better fuels and engines that showed up in 1942. Portal was guilty of not keeping up with the changes. But to claim he ( or other RAF brass) were guilty of ignoring what was not possible before then is not fair.
Exactly. In the mid 30s Spaatz wrote to Arnold that a long range escort fighter could not fight a short range fighter on equal terms because of the compromises it would have to make to carry so much fuel. In Autumn 1941 the USAAF board looking in to long range escort fighters, they decided to build the YB-40 (a B-17 with extra armour and guns).
A properly planned move to an offensive role (plus those other requirements) would have pushed the RAF into improving range. In the Spit's case, make it a MR plane (combat radius of around 300 miles), then eventually a LR one. The work being done turning bog standard Spits into LR PR ones showed the technical possibility. That ended, except for PR ones, when Portal came into power.
Portal "came to power" in October 1940. His priority was more fighters for defence, not longer ranged fighters.
In March 1941 Spaatz and Hoyt Vandenburg turned down a proposal to equip the P-39 with drop tanks. Their reasons:
Additional range would ""provide opportunities for improper tactical use of pursuit types", and the changes "would tend to slow up production and reduce the combat effectiveness of the airplane."
The same reasons would be in Portal's mind. Indeed, they would have been more pressing for Portal. Whilst the USAAF was not yet in the war, the RAF was, and it was the only major air force standing against the Luftwaffe. Portal needed more Spitfires because it was the only fighter in the world at the time that could face the Luftwaffe on equal terms.
A properly planned move to an offensive role (plus those other requirements) would have pushed the RAF into improving range. In the Spit's case, make it a MR plane (combat radius of around 300 miles), then eventually a LR one. The work being done turning bog standard Spits into LR PR ones showed the technical possibility. That ended, except for PR ones, when Portal came into power.
No it didn't. The Spitfire VII and VIII were fitted with extra fuel to increase range. Sadly the Luftwaffe delayed them.
In 1940 the RAF needed more Spitfires desperately and didn't care about range.
In 1941 with the advent of the 109F the RAF desperately needed to get the Spitfire V into service in large numbers, to replace not just earlier Spitfires but the Hurricane as well.
In 1942 the RAF was supposed to begin switching to the Spitfire VII and VIII, with more fuel for increased range. Then the Fw190 came along and once again the RAF was desperate to get faster Spitfires, not longer ranged ones.
Long range Spitfires were a luxury the RAF simply couldn't afford for most of the war. And the RAF never had the urgent requirement that the USAAF faced in 1943, and that led to the modification of the P-51.
I keep repeating that a up to a couple of months before the P-51B went operational he was still writing to Arnold lecturing him on the 'impossibility' of a LR fighter and that the USAAF should give up day operations and join the RAF in night ones.
There was a lot of pressure on the USAAF to switch to night bombing in 1943. They had been at war for 18 months and had yet to begin bombing Germany in earnest. The politicians didn't want to wait another 6 months for an escort fighter that the USAAF was promising would be ready by the start of 1944.
That was to repeatedly hit the German U-Boat bases in the Bay of Biscay, before they built all the reinforced pens in 41 and 42. Now the RAF could have done it and prevented the pens being built (which made them immune from bombing until the Tallboys came along). But it had to be done in the day (the RAF's night navigation was too bad) and that meant escorts.... which they didn't have because Portal said it was impossible.
RAF navigation was fine for attacking coastal targets at night. In the Spring of 1941 they made a lot of attacks on German naval targets in France, with some success. That's what prompted the Germans to begin construction of the U boat pens in the first place.
Nobody seems to have considered the pens to be a worthwhile target during construction, perhaps because a building site manned with French labourers wasn't exactly high value to the Germans. Concrete is, after all, cheap.
The theory that the pens weren't attacked during construction due to a lack of range for escorts doesn't hold water. The largest German U boat pen was at Brest. The RAF flew 2 major daylight attacks on Brest in 1941.
In the first, on the afternoon of 24 July, 3 B-17s, 56 Wellingtons and 18 Hampdens attacked the Scharnhorst, Geneisenau and Prinz Eugen in Brest and La Pallice. They were escorted by 9 squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes.
The fighters claimed 3 aircraft for 2 losses. 16 bombers were lost.
There was another escorted daylight attack on the German ships in December. 11 squadrons of fighters escorted 47 Halifaxes, Manchesters and Stirlings. The fighters claimed 4 kills for 1 loss, 7 bombers were lost.
If the pens had been a priority they would have been attacked, night or day. They weren't. There were so many other priorities. But it certainly wasn't a lack of escorts that stopped them being attacked, as ships and submarines in those ports were attacked.