RAF's alternative doctrine and procurement between 1934 and 1940

[Shortround6]

no Gladiator, no Defiant; Hurricane to be produced by Hawker and Gloster; Spitfire to be produced by Vickers-Supermarine, Boulton Paul and Westland (sorry, Whirlwind lovers).

With no Gladiators we are back to flying Gauntlets in a few 1st line squadrons in Sept 1939.
Gladiator production numbers are deceptive.
Wiki says 747 built. however
The RAF ordered 231 MK Is ( with just over 200 on order in 1935?) and 300 Mk IIs in 1938 (with 98 of them being Sea Gladiators.)

Gloster exported 222 (?) Gladiators to 10 different countries before the war (some ex RAF aircraft included)
94 (?) ex RAF machines were exported to a further 5 countries after the war started.

At the time of the Munich crises in Sept 1938 the RAF had 6 Gladiator squadrons on strength, 2 Hurricane Squadrons and 0 Spitfire squadrons. The rest of Fighter Commands strength was Gauntlets, Furies and Demons.

The vast majority (if not all?) Gladiators were completed before Hurricanes got metal wings.

Defiant needs to go, but since production Defiant's didn't show up until Dec 1939 and it took until Sept of 1940 (?) to get the 3rd squadron into service itis not quite in the same time line as 1938-39 production.

Lease machinery from Castle Bromwich factory to B-P and Westland.

What machinery?
Unless you are trying to get around the labor (union) difficulties.
Castle Bromwich was a brand new factory with new machinery. Sending it's machinery elsewhere doesn't add production.

And besides, the problem with Westland producing any fighters of any sort was that they were busy building 4-7 Lysanders a week.
Priorities

 

[tomo pauk]

But mainly there's no point in getting deep into technical things if the doctrine isn't right. The RAF was not prepared for war. The Air Staff had the intelligence form Spain but did not use it, preferring to stick to their delusions.

You are certainly entitled to suggest changes about how the RAF should've did the things in this time frame.

 

[K5083]

The technical problems exist but they are trivial. All the players in WW2 were capable of building decent aircraft in all categories, or at least the ones who had good engines.. The problem was the air forces asking for the wrong stuff. They asked for the wrong stuff because they had not defined the problem they needed to solve correctly given the war that happened. They were addressing other problems that seemed more important to them. Inter-service rivalry. Politics. Funding. Unrealistic Douhet/Mitchell/Trenchard ideas about strategic bombing. An expected repeat of WW1 conditions. It doesn't matter what head configuration the merlin had or what was the best engine for a Sherman.

So on being invited to suggest what the RAF should have done it is first necessary to ask what problem we are trying to solve for them. Fight the WW2 that happened (with our advantage of hindsight) or be ready for anything?

 

[Shortround6]

Merlin in the nose allows for carrying twice the firepower vs. what the French fighters had.

French fighters, even the MS 406, weren't using fixed pitch props. If you are trying to take-off with your cannon armed Hurricane and you can only use 2000-2100hp from your Merlin engine without overspeeding the prop and loosing whatever thrust you do have you have nowhere near the "book" 880 hp.

Was just re-reading a passage about Hawker sketching out a Hurricane with four 20mm Oerlikons in 1937 and remarks made about how it took 4 years for the RAF to catch up after trying the Whirlwind.
The fabric wing, the fixed pitch prop and the change from the Merlin II engine to the Merlin XX engine (880hp take-off and that is a joke to 1280hp for take-off) are totally missing from that section of the narrative.

In the history I linked to earlier it says that the RAF went from 52 airfields in 1934 to 138 home airfields by the end of 1939 and the money spent on airfields and "works" (buildings, hangers, schools etc) in 1939 was 3 times what was spent on the entire RAF (pay, new planes, maintenance and airfield construction) what it was in 1934.

It was only in 1938 that the government changed it's policy from "business as usual/don't interfere with companies or farmers" to something more aggressive. This allowed for longer airfields and/or getting rid of buildings and trees that were obstacles next to the runways. It also allowed for more effective/elaborate airfields.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Yes, not straying into that blind alley would've improve the supply of reliable Merlins early on.
About the fuel metering - adoption the pressure-injection carbs already before the war would've also allowed for some performance gain ( the Spitfire V gained 10 mph and 1500 ft in ceiling once the float-type carb was replaced by a 'fuel pump'). Add the more streamlined exhausts for another 6-7 mph, and the Hurricane I is now good for 330+ mph, and Spitfire I/II at 370-380 mph. Hurricane might also benefit from a better radiator set-up, perhaps in the 'beard' position (it helped XP-40 and Typhoon, plus already the Battle is with it).

Now that I'm blabbering about the fighters: no Gladiator, no Defiant; Hurricane to be produced by Hawker and Gloster; Spitfire to be produced by Vickers-Supermarine, Boulton Paul and Westland (sorry, Whirlwind lovers). Lease machinery from Castle Bromwich factory to B-P and Westland. Supermarine needs to came out with ribs that have far less pieces than it was the case historically, so the manhours to make Spitfire are reduced.

Although they entered production in 1938, the Bendix Stromberg pressure carbs were not fully developed before the war.

 

[nuuumannn]

In terms of simple single-seat fighters there was no magic in designing a decent fighter IF you had a competitive engine. Stick to basics, keep it simple. You do need to know who you are going to fight and when the war will start. A year out and you have a MS406 when you need a D.520."


But mainly there's no point in getting deep into technical things if the doctrine isn't right. The RAF was not prepared for war. The Air Staff had the intelligence form Spain but did not use it, preferring to stick to their delusions.

I think the problem here is that this thread exists because we all believe and know that "things could have been different i.e. better if...", so much of this thread is gonna revolve around hindsight. The statement above is valid, but to a point. How many of the world's air forces at the time, apart from the Germans, DID heed the lessons from Spain? Approximately none, in reality. Not the Americans, perhaps, but not overly certain the Russians did, the Italians certainly didn't, or at least the lessons they took away from Spain were the wrong ones and we know the French were too busy in-fighting to notice... The RAF had lots of problems going into the war and with hindsight we know what these were - turret fighters? Blenheims and Battles flying straight and level over heavily defended targets? Army co-operation with the wrong aircraft? The problem is, what was everyone else doing that was so much more on-point? The Airacuda, anyone? The Zerstorer? The Breda 88? Everything French?

You see, by the standards we apply, before the war everyone was in a bit of a quandary about how to fight wars, not just the RAF. I bet if we spend time scrutinising every other major air force in the world, we'll see lots of discrepancies, it's just the RAF gets so much more attention because of its position at the time. It was one of the biggest, most powerful and most modern air forces in the world and compared to what is the point I'm making. The USA might have had shiny all-metal bombers, but only a handful of real useful ones that were entirely unfit for modern combat and their fighters were not a match for European ones, the French were too busy arguing and undermining each other, the Italians were still swanning around in biplanes suffering from delusions of grandeur and like the Germans converting transports into bombers with odd characteristics, the Russians had some modern aircraft but were stuck in the perpetual hell that living under Stalin presented and were still largely agricultural in most things and no one at the time believed the Japanese could do anything worthwhile, meanwhile they were, but with their own inter-departmental rivalries and lack of forward thinking that hampered their future plans.

The Germans were organisationally and in some ways equipment-wise the best at what they did - extensive reconnaissance assets and infrastructure - no one else, not even the RAF was as well equipped, one of the best fighters in the world in the Bf 109, some good but odd bombers with performance (the Do 17) that was nothing to shout about, but equipped with the most modern means of finding and attacking ground targets - the Knickebein and X-Gerat devices, which made them potentially the most accurate bombing force in the world. With some really good operational level commanders, no one else compared. What was the downside? No follow through and bad leadership at the top. Talk about bad or inadequate policies for war? What happened to the Bomber A and B programmes? Converting everything that flies and carries a bomb into a dive bomber? The rampant inter departmental in-fighting and currying favour that was actively encouraged by the head of the Reich, for starters?

The thing is, if we look back at what the RAF was and balk and cry out in shame, we have to then put that up against the lessons it learned when the chips were down. Bomber Command got its big bombers, its radio navigation aids, (let's not forget the US 8th AF originally wanted to fly daylight missions WITHOUT escort fighters in 1942) Fighter Command got its 400 mph fighters and had in the Spitfire one of the best performing and longest serving fighters of the war, Coastal Command met the U boat threat with technological advances despite starting with barely adequate collection of motley machines resembling Dastardly and Muttley's Flying Circus. And what about Army co-operation? Under the stewardship of Coningham, the RAF Tactical Air Forces set the benchmark for close support, pioneering the hallmarks of the artform we know of today. And what about the jewel in its crown, the Empire Air Training Scheme? There was nothing else like it. Lessons learned and overcome, with help from reliable and resource abundant allies. Communication was the key to victory - the RAF employed people from all over the world and worked well with its friends to get the best out of its assets. The enemy didn't play well with others, certainly not as well as it could or should have.

Look at the Germans, by comparison. They got some pretty special stuff done but failed at the fundamentals. Supply, logistics and strategic planning for the future all went out the window. The Bomber A and B programmes were beyond their reach, forcing them to retain elderly inadequate aircraft for longer than anticipated, their jet and rocket programmes were stifled by shortages thanks to the extensive Allied bombing, their advanced engines, while innovative and clever were failing on the work bench - essentially they bit off more than they could chew - that's bad strategy for you.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

It is true that the US Army kept the Ford engined M4A3 for itself, but that is not the whole story.

The US Army standardised on the R-975 powered M4/M4A1 for their front line units until well into 1944. Other versions were used by Stateside training units before many entered a remanufacturing programme from late 1943. After July 1944 the M4A3 supplemented them.

The initial 1,690 Ford GAA V8 engined M4A3 built by Ford (all the Shermans that Ford built) June 1942-Sept 1943 were retained as training tanks in the USA until those engine bugs were sorted. Those vehicles only began to appear on the front line late in 1944 after being remanufactured. The M4A3 was declared "suitable for overseas supply" in June 1943. It was then Feb 1944 before the Ford engines again appeared in new production tanks and July 1944 before they began to appear on the frontline.

Britain received all variants except the M4A3. The diesel M4A2 (over 5,000) being the second most used version after the M4A4 and followed by the M4A1 and finally the M4. It was only from Feb 1944 that all new, as opposed to remanufactured, M4A2 went to the USSR.

I didn't mean to imply that the US Army only used the Ford V-8, but they certainly preferred them. They did use diesels in the tank destroyers based on the M4.

 

[nuuumannn]

So, to follow through with the theme of the thread, just plan to do everything the RAF did in the war, before the war. Obviously, the war has to happen before some of these lessons are learned. Things like the Empire Air Training Scheme, the creation of the Desert Air Force under Coningham, the de Havilland Mosquito, Mitchell's death so Joe Smith takes over Spitfire development et al. For starters, listen to Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, as all the things he griped about and what was dismissed as mere pessimism turned out to be very valid points that took wartime experience and the Butt Report to highlight, such as poor navigation to and from target areas, inadequate gunnery training, no long-range escort fighters, inadequate performance of bomber types etc, and put a dynamic individual into Bomber Command to fulfil these things, give Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm to the navy, put a smart thinking individual like Coningham into Army Co-operation Command, set up a joint RAF/RN/Army photographic intelligence organisation and link it within the greater intelligence community and invest in adequately performing aircraft for photograph taking, etc etc...

 

[Shortround6]

So, to follow through with the theme of the thread, just plan to do everything the RAF did in the war, before the war. Obviously, the war has to happen before some of these lessons are learned. Things like the Empire Air Training Scheme, the creation of the Desert Air Force under Coningham, the de Havilland Mosquito, Mitchell's death so Joe Smith takes over Spitfire development et al. For starters, listen to Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, as all the things he griped about and what was dismissed as mere pessimism turned out to be very valid points that took wartime experience and the Butt Report to highlight, such as poor navigation to and from target areas, inadequate gunnery training, no long-range escort fighters, inadequate performance of bomber types etc, and put a dynamic individual into Bomber Command to fulfil these things, give Coastal Command and the Fleet Air Arm to the navy, put a smart thinking individual like Coningham into Army Co-operation Command, set up a joint RAF/RN/Army photographic intelligence organisation and link it within the greater intelligence community and invest in adequately performing aircraft for photograph taking, etc etc...

I think you have forgotten to mention that the British (at least for the English speaking world) also seemed to have turned out a fairly high number of historians/authors so the British trials and tribulations are better documented and more widely spread than some other nations missteps.
Out of sight and out of mind?
The US certainly came up with it's share of clanger's but with the front lines several thousand miles away most of them stayed home and out of sight.
The Huge output of the US also helps hide some of the less than stellar stuff.
The US had 11 (?) single seat fighters that flew in combat talk about so a lot of the strange stuff only comes out in the blooper reels,
At least the British never tried to see how many existing airplane parts they could combine into one airframe.

and we didn't build one of them, we modified it, flew it again and tried to put it into production

 

[nuuumannn]

Here's some airframe related suggestions. Give de Havilland lots of money to build lots of factories to build his unarmed bomber design, and don't put a turret on it! Tell George Volkert to not build the HP.57 because it turns out to be rubbish for the first two years of its life and to concentrate on a high-speed bomber idea, and tell Chadwick to put Merlins on the Manchester and to fit bigger vertical stabilisers! Tell Nash and Thompson to not supply the terrible FN.7 turret! Tell John North of Boulton Paul to build a purpose designed single-seat aircraft carrier fighter for the Fleet Air Arm! Don't give Blackburn any work! Tell Sid Camm to make the Hurricane's replacement's wings thinner, their tails stronger and for heaven's sake, seal the cockpit to stop carbon monoxide ingress! Tell Hives of Rolls-Royce to get Hooker to work on a two-speed two-stage supercharger and for god's sake, guys! Stop messing around with carburettors! While you're at it, Hives, tell Joe Smith to build a Spitfire that can take said two-speed two-stage Merlin and Griffon! Tell Frank Halford to abandon Napier and go work for de Havilland on jet engines! Speaking of which, tell that Whittle fellow to forget Rover and go work for Rolls-Royce, under no uncertain terms! Tell Shorts to not begin production of the Stirling until testing of the small-scale prototype has ended, so they fix the wing incidence and increase its length, which means it doesn't need its ridiculously complex undercarriage! Put someone else in charge of bomb and munitions development! Tell Fairey to stop designing the Barracuda and focus on the Firefly! Tell the navy (who now has the Fleet Air Arm - see the previous post) to buy Grumman designed carrier aircraft! Tell Fedden to go away! But beforehand, tell Bristol to cancel the Beaufort and Blenheim and focus on the Beaufort Fighter! Tell Charles Portal to go home! Then in his absence implement a long-range fighter programme! And get North American to design it! Then tell Gloster to stop building damned biplanes and Hurricanes and put said North American fighter into licence production for the RAF!

Sums it up...

 

[Shortround6]

The other thing is that the British could have changed history, for better or worse.
Stop Hitler sooner or flub it up.

The Germans had an outside chance, very, very outside.

The Italians weren't going to change anything.

The US, once they start, are just going to steamroller the axis.

The US made more steel in any two years between 1942 and 45 than German made from 1939 to 1945. Give the US 3 years and they made more steel than the just about entire axis (including Rumania?) did for the whole war.

Not smarter, or braver or anything else, but the ability to make more tanks, planes, ships bombs or so on. We can argue over how long it might take but if the Americans keep fighting the end is not really in doubt.

The French weren't going to change anything without some major changes.

The Japanese position is well known. Get the US to give up in the first 6 months (year at the outside) or they are history (Japan in a good year made 10% of the steel the US did).

The Soviets, without help, are goners. After 1941 the Soviet steel production is less than 1/3 the German steel production. In 1941 it was around 2/3rds.

It is the challenge of changing the British trajectory that draws people in.
And the British did somethings very well indeed and also did have, just like some other people/counties some "what could they possibly have been thinking" moments.

for the US we can look at not one, not two, but three fighter prototypes (and there were more planes on paper) the XP-54, XP-55 and XP-56 in the "what could they possibly have been thinking" catagory.

 

[Shortround6]

Put someone else in charge of bomb and munitions development!

That would solve a whole bunch of British problems on land, sea and in the air.

Doesn't matter what kind of bombers you build if you have crap bombs.

Doesn't matter what kind of anti-sub aircraft you build if you have crap anti-sub bomb bombs.

Doesn't matter what kind of artillery guns you build if you have crap artillery shells.

 

[nuuumannn]

The US, once they start, are just going to steamroller the axis.

for the US we can look at not one, not two, but three fighter prototypes (and there were more planes on paper) the XP-54, XP-55 and XP-56 in the "what could they possibly have been thinking" catagory.

Yup and yup. But before 1939 the US' ace up its sleeve was what it was capable of, not what it was doing. In the 1930s, despite what its industry did in the war, was not capable of that level of production nor capability. Until French and British orders with companies like Douglas and Lockheed, US military production was slow and working at peacetime speed and necessity, as Britain's had before the war began. Perhaps the biggest advance the US had over Europe was propeller design. That's it. All metal aircraft were in production and service in Europe across the board. Before the war the US armed forces were producing aircraft inferior to European designs and it took assistance from Britain to get US technology capability to a good, war worthy place. American fighters and bombers were under-armed and under-defended compared to British ones. Self-sealing tanks and armour plating was not universally introduced into US aircraft until the Battle of Britain and its lessons. Its bombers simply couldn't do what they advertised they could. British experience with the handful of B-17s it was supplied proved this. The aircraft was simply unflyable at the altitudes it was advertised it could reach. The B-18 Bolo was the US' predominant frontline bomber in the first couple of years of the war and it had poorer performance, defensive armament and bomb load compared to British and German bombers. US fighters, while built and designed well were not to the same performance standard as European designs. Let's not forget the long-range escort fighter thing - the US decided it was going to fly unescorted raids against German targets in 1942 until the British advised them not to, and their own experience taught them this was a bad idea. US lagged behind in other areas, too, its radar, gun turrets and jet engines were behind Britain's and while there was no doubt that in a vacuum the US could have done its own, Britain and Germany were ahead and the gifting of this tech definitely helped America. The reality is, that if it were America going to war against Germany in 1939, the results would have looked a whole lot like how the British ones did in the first year or two of the war.

This is not to disparage the US, but to highlight why complaining about the RAF needs to be put into perspective.

 

[nuuumannn]

That would solve a whole bunch of British problems on land, sea and in the air.

But, boy, did they come back from it... This is the point. If things didn't change, then it was for nought, but we know that wasn't the case, unlike the Germans of course, who started strong and went downhill from there.

Converse to this, however, a bomb is only as useful as its delivery system enables it to be. No good having weapons of mass destruction if all your aeroplanes or artillery pieces are either destroyed or buried in sand dunes...

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Here's some airframe related suggestions. Give de Havilland lots of money to build lots of factories to build his unarmed bomber design, and don't put a turret on it! Tell George Volkert to not build the HP.57 because it turns out to be rubbish for the first two years of its life and to concentrate on a high-speed bomber idea, and tell Chadwick to put Merlins on the Manchester and to fit bigger vertical stabilisers! Tell Nash and Thompson to not supply the terrible FN.7 turret! Tell John North of Boulton Paul to build a purpose designed single-seat aircraft carrier fighter for the Fleet Air Arm! Don't give Blackburn any work! Tell Sid Camm to make the Hurricane's replacement's wings thinner, their tails stronger and for heaven's sake, seal the cockpit to stop carbon monoxide ingress! Tell Hives of Rolls-Royce to get Hooker to work on a two-speed two-stage supercharger and for god's sake, guys! Stop messing around with carburettors! While you're at it, Hives, tell Joe Smith to build a Spitfire that can take said two-speed two-stage Merlin and Griffon! Tell Frank Halford to abandon Napier and go work for de Havilland on jet engines! Speaking of which, tell that Whittle fellow to forget Rover and go work for Rolls-Royce, under no uncertain terms! Tell Shorts to not begin production of the Stirling until testing of the small-scale prototype has ended, so they fix the wing incidence and increase its length, which means it doesn't need its ridiculously complex undercarriage! Put someone else in charge of bomb and munitions development! Tell Fairey to stop designing the Barracuda and focus on the Firefly! Tell the navy (who now has the Fleet Air Arm - see the previous post) to buy Grumman designed carrier aircraft! Tell Fedden to go away! But beforehand, tell Bristol to cancel the Beaufort and Blenheim and focus on the Beaufort Fighter! Tell Charles Portal to go home! Then in his absence implement a long-range fighter programme! And get North American to design it! Then tell Gloster to stop building damned biplanes and Hurricanes and put said North American fighter into licence production for the RAF!

Sums it up...

Increasing the wingspan of the Stirling would not solve its problems, it would just make an overweight, high drag aircraft even more overweight and even draggier. I don't know how much a length of wing weighs but even adding another 1000 lb would make the ridiculously low payload even smaller. I also don't believe you could tell Camm anything, certainly not according to Beverly Shenstone. Note that Camm made the same thick wing mistake with the Typhoon.
.

 

[nuuumannn]

Increasing the wingspan of the Stirling would not solve its problems, it would just make an overweight, high drag aircraft even more overweight and even draggier. I don't know how much a length of wing weighs but even adding another 1000 lb would make the ridiculously low payload even smaller. I also don't believe you could tell Camm anything, certainly not according to Beverly Shenstone. Note that Camm made the same thick wing mistake with the Typhoon.

Agree, but the Stirling needed to shed weight and perhaps had testing been completed before they decided on production its faults would have been revealed before they couldn't have been fixed is the point. As for Camm, yup, the same with Fedden and Portal and a lot of those guys, but that's not the point of the exercise, it's to demonstrate what should be done, rather than why it wasn't. Example - you didn't tell Hives anything. He was fiercely loyal to his firm and jumped on any criticism of it, even if it was justified.

 

[Shortround6]

But, boy, did they come back from it... This is the point. If things didn't change, then it was for nought, but we know that wasn't the case, unlike the Germans of course, who started strong and went downhill from there.

getting a bit off track but it shows how changes in one area can make big differences tactics/results even when the actual hardware doesn't change much.

The British built shells with cheap steel, which restricted both HE payload and range.

I have complained before about the poor outfit of British artillery in the BEF.

Now in 1940 a British infantry division had about 40 radios (Germans may have done better, just about everybody else seems to have been worse) and 20 something of them were part of the Division artillery net. There was also a field phone net. This stuff connected the forward observers, the division artillery batteries, the division command, the command elements of the neighboring divisions and so on. Forward observers didn't do a lot of target selection, They might report back what they say but higher ups would make the decisions as to what targets to actually engage and how much ammo to use and it was rare for one division to support a division on either side. This does limit the ability of the artillery to influence the battle but it was pretty standard.
By the fall of 1944 the British army had the most effective artillery system in use during WW II. By now a British infantry division had almost 1000 radios and somewhat less field phones. But the radio networks between the FOs, the batteries, the infantry head quarters (at different levels) and the neighboring divisions batteries and unit headquarters and changes in doctrine allowed for a forward observer, on his own authority, to call for fire on a target from every tube/battery in range regardless of what division or corp it was attached to if the FO thought the target justified it. No other army (not the Americans) gave the forward observers such authority and no other army had a communications network that would allow neighboring units to integrate their fire to that extent. The British 25pdr guns were still firing crappy shells though

The changes in doctrine and communications made a huge difference in British army artillery effectiveness in spite of poor shell design/s. But it took a while to get there and you needed a crap load of radios/communications gear.

 

[nuuumannn]

changes in doctrine

That's right, and how much change in doctrine came about from operational experience in wartime? You don't know what you don't know until you are forced to face it. You've hinted at it yourself; the status quo was a real low bar in the late 1930s.

As I mentioned, this doctrine change could have easily changed Bomber Command's fortunes earlier had there been more dynamic and self-aware commanders in the RAF before the war. Ludlow-Hewitt was well aware of his command's deficiencies in aircraft performance, navigation, bombing and gunnery training and regularly fired off communiques to the Air Staff to bring these things to their attention, even going so far to state that following the Spanish Civil War the RAF should adopt long range escort fighters. No one listened, but he was right all along, and it took countless aircrews' lives and lots of aircraft lost before anyone imposed the kinds of doctrinal and equipment changes required to set the command onto a more productive path. He did manage to centralise gunnery training however, which was a big boon, not just to the RAF but to the navy and army.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Here is a fantastic USAAC puff piece made in 1940. The review of the AACs latest and greatest starts at ~ 20.00. That "thing of beauty" the B-18 apparently would drop "thousands of tons of bombs" on any enemy that had the audacity to attack the US. "Armed with machine guns and cannons" it would be a formidable opponent indeed.

If the USAAC had fought the Battle of Britain it would have done so with P-35s, P-36s and even P-26s. While the B-17 was a formidable aircraft by 1940 standards the US wasn't pushing it preferring the B-18. Considering the fixation the USAAC had on bombing it is surprising that the B-17 was an afterthought although I'm sure Congress had something to do with that.
The US Navy was a biplane force at the time with the exception of the Douglas Devastator.
The US would have been hard pressed to fight the Battle of Britain and that's not even considering the most important part, command and control. One thing the British did far, far better than anyone else was to develop an integrated air defense system. In this regard they truly saw the future.

 

[nuuumannn]

While the B-17 was a formidable aircraft by 1940 standards the US wasn't pushing it preferring the B-18.

The early B-17 was a thing of beauty, a real good-looking machine, but it was far from combat capable. When the US agreed to send B-17Cs/Fortress Is to Britain a lot of observers were keen to witness how it went and several, including civilian medical scientists to study the effects of altitude flying on aircrew went with the aircraft to Britain. Unfortunately, it was a disaster for the aircraft and the US observers had little answer to the problems the aircraft faced. It took three months to bring 90 Sqn to a state of readiness. Mechanically the aircraft suffered numerous maintenance faults, particularly with their engines and one was destroyed because one of its engines caught fire on the ground. This is the reason why the first raids were flown by so few aircraft; the rest were unserviceable.

The first Fort lost took place in June 1941 during a test flight, it broke up in mid-air at 33,000 ft because of severe icing, a sign of things to come. The aircraft could just reach the altitudes prescribed, but they suffered from the effects of icing, one (of three) aircraft on the first raid launched in July, had to reduce height and turn back without having dropped its bombs because of severe vibration and jamming of flight controls because of icing, at 25,000 ft. It also suffered an oil leak. Obviously, once at lower altitudes the ice melted, and the aircraft was controllable. Guns jammed, windscreens iced over, the problems were numerous. On that first raid only four bombs from one aircraft hit the target. The other remaining aircraft couldn't open its bomb bay doors.

The experiment went badly following that first raid, unserviceability and bad weather meant raids were cancelled, and by the end of September, aircraft losses were growing to the extent that Bomber Command had decided the Fortress I was not suitable for operations. The experiment, it was decided was to continue in the Middle East and four Fortresses were sent to Egypt in late October 1941. The remainder of 90 Sqn's aircraft went to Coastal Command.