You are in charge of the Luftwaffe: July 1940

[parsifal]

I already posed a question about Britishh AAA capabilities in 1940. Here it is again,how many Luftwaffe bombers (including dive bombers) did British AAA shoot down in 1940?
If I was Hermann Goering I would run my air war against "England" very differently and with a much greater chance of success.

Cheers

Steve

In response to the first issue, deighton says that conservatively during the whole of 1940, British AA shot down 400 german a/c. Dont how many of that number were bombers.

However, the primary role of flak is not shooting down enemies, its to disrupt enemy bombing accuracy. Even poor AA can do that .

in relation to your second claim, you might run it differently and succeed in alerting the british of your plans. you have most definately not shown that the destruction of the chain home system was possible, have not shown that british c7c was utterly dependant on that system, and have failed to consider the quid pro quos of your actions.

Case is not proven or shown likley at all in my opinion

 

[stona]

Well I've had enough of this now but there was a gap created on 12 August which the Luftwaffe exploited in its attacks on Lympne,Hawkinge,Portsmouth and Ventnor which were not tracked and not intercepted before they bombed,something that both Dowding and Park always tried to achieve. On 17th September Leigh Mallory reported to Dowding on wing patrols,including Baders fanciful claims. On Park's copy of the report he has simply noted "Did these wings engage before targets were bombed?" (Mason,"Battle over Britain" and Higham,"Royal Air Force") The answer of course was no.

A case of "Sir,we have reports that they are bombing Portsmouth".

After the attacks on Chain Home and the airfields a force of more than 100 Ju 88s of KG 51,120 Bf 110s of ZG 2 and 25 Bf 109s of JG 53 formed up over the French coast completely undetected .
They were well on the way to their target by the time (11.45 am) they were finally detected by Poling. The Observer Corps was unsure where they were going,first reports suggested the Brighton area. In fact 70 Ju 88s bombed Portsmouth unintercepted. When the RAF arrived they did not chance Portsmouth's flak but attacked the withdrawing force shooting down one Ju 88 which crashed off Bognor Regis. The Ventnor attack was also unintercepted. 609 squadron finally arrived to find a large number (they said 200) German aircraft over the island.

If that's not a hole in the radar coverage I don't know what is.

The sector control system is almost useless without the radar. With out its "long range vision" the system did not have time to react to the incoming raids effectively.

I'd be amazed if British AAA shot down 1 in 5 Luftwaffe aircraft in the period. Even if it did,that's not going to compensate for the destruction of Fighter Command who presumably destroyed the other 4 out of 5.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Njaco]

I have to go with Stona's working theory.

With hindsight - mind you - I would still go for the radar. I see alot of "If you do this, you will fail because...." Well, maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't. We do know what happened when a hap-hazard effort was made on the radar chain. What would happen if a concentrated 2 week effort was made? I think its possible that a serious break/gap in the system would allow the LW to concentrate for 2 or 3 weeks on the airfields - the proper ones not the satellite (hindsight is wonderful!)

With all the facts present, you still need some "Lets just do it" attitude - you might succeed.

 

[wiking85]

My premise for the defeat of Fighter Command,which I have repeated several times,is based on the destruction of the RAF's command and control system. This is now a pre-requisite of any modern aerial campaign.
It is essential to destroy the Chain Home sites and the Luftwaffe demonstrated historically that this was possible. It wasn't done because the Luftwaffe didn't understand and under estimated their importance to Britain's air defence system and never made a coordinated effort to disable them

The anti radar attack of 12th August which tore a 100 mile wide gap in British radar coverage was never repeated.

Goering:

"It is doubtful whether there is any point in continuing the attacks on radar sites, in view of the fact that not one of those attacked has so far been put out of action."

Infact he was wrong,some had been put out of action (Rye,Pevensey,Dover for a short period,Ventnor for three days) and wrong again,he should have continued with the attacks.

On 7th August a Luftwaffe intelligence report had already demostrated that they just didn't get it.

"As the British fighters are controlled from the ground by radio-telephone, their forces are tied to their respective ground stations and are thereby restricted in mobility, even taking into consideration the probability that the ground stations are partly mobile. Consequently the assembly of strong fighter forces at determined points and at short notice is not to be expected."

Of course that is exactly what Chain Home did enable the RAF to do.

Without this system the familiar voice of sector controllers immortalised in various movies....."Blue leader I have some trade for you,60+ bandits,Angels one five,vector one six zero" ....becomes the self same controller picking up another telephone to be told...."Sir we have reports that they are bombing Hawkinge".


Fighter Command wouldn't know where the Luftwaffe attacks were heading or even the strength of the attacks until it was too late to intercept them with fighters already at altitude and in approximately the correct position.
People are quoting the historical Luftwaffe losses as evidence of its diminishing strength,which is historically correct,but in my scenario the RAF are not making the interceptions and my Luftwaffe losses are much reduced.

That is how Fighter Command could have been defeated. I am not repeating the historical campaign and it doesn't really matter whether we agree or disagree on just how close run that was. I won't be making the same mistakes.

Cheers

Steve

Alright, let's assume your premise is true, that the LW is able to smash a hole in the radar screen and starts bashing up the airfields of FC badly enough to force them to withdraw from some of the southern fields; what then?
Can you take me from the point of how this causes Britain to accept peace terms?

 

[nuuumannn]

Yep, I think you got it, Chris; such an attack on the UK was a bold premise not to be taken lightly and if you are going to commit, it has to be wholeheartedly. Naturally there would be continuous attacks on Britain's radar network; it makes sense to do so, whether you understand how the network works or not. As Steve mentioned, even taking out one or two aerials would allow raids to be missed until it was too late, which could be used to your advantage.

You could also do what the British did and 'listen' electronically for radio signals emanating from the radar and come up with an attempt to create jamming equipment, or even throw 'window' from your bombers to disrupt and confuse the radar, which would partially remove the threat of detection. Bombing isn't always the only means of disabling a C3 network. If you have scientists that could concoct something as clever as X-Gerat, you can come up with a means of countering Britain's radio signals, if you put your mind to it.

As for the Nazis, Riacriato, when you analyse what went wrong and why, you begin to wonder what could they possibly have hoped to achieve with all that they did. Their actions were bold and brazen, often clever, but it was all for nothing. The Nazis chose two countries to invade that have steadfastly resisted multiple attempts at invasion throughout history; Russia and the British Isles. They opened up a war on more than one front, which Hitler had been warned against doing by his own senior staff and the whole mess degenerated into a war of attrition, which Germany could not sustain. Her armed forces were not designed for it, although they did a pretty good job of adapting to new threats.

 

[nuuumannn]

what then?

Gotterdammerung. No less.

 

[stona]

Alright, let's assume your premise is true, that the LW is able to smash a hole in the radar screen and starts bashing up the airfields of FC badly enough to force them to withdraw from some of the southern fields; what then?
Can you take me from the point of how this causes Britain to accept peace terms?

Not just the southern airfields.
My Bf 109s have drop tanks. I will go after the RAF wherever it goes. After my initial victories I want to be able to bomb the North and Midlands unmolested too. I don't want my Norwegian based units to receive the same nasty surprise that they did historically.

I don't think that defeating Fighter Command is the biggest leap in this scenario. I honestly believe that it could have been accomplished and with very minor changes to the equipment that the Luftwaffe already had. The campaign would be fought very differently,but isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?

Would this have forced Britain to negotiate? I don't know and there is no way of knowing,this is a bigger leap into the unknown. I think it is possible,not probable. I don't discount the possibility out of hand. There is plenty of evidence that not everyone in Britain felt the way Churchill did. Mind you,during the London Blitz you'd expect Londoners to complain most about the bombing. The Whitehall eavedroppers recorded that what people were moaning most about was ...... the weather!


It certainly represents Germany's best chance of getting Britain out of the war. A seaborne invasion I believe to have been impossible for the Wermacht in 1940.

Cheers

Steve

 

[nuuumannn]

The Whitehall eavedroppers recorded that what people were moaning most about was ...... the weather!

Not much has changed in the intervening years!

 

[stona]

Not much has changed in the intervening years!

Some things never change
Steve

 

[parsifal]

The attacks delivered 12 August did not see any major breakthroughs for the Luftwaffe. Certainly the specialist precision bombing experts of Erprobungsgruppe 210 managed to temporarily knock out four stations through which poured Ju88s and Ju87s. Ventnor was the most significantly damaged radar site, and Manston came in for some real punishment. But in the air the LW did not significantly do any better in th air than they had done on any preceding battle. The RAF lost 21 a/c, some on the ground, to the LW 27. Thats pretty consistent with the average for the whole campaign.

Kesselring in fact pointed out how poinltess it was to attack the radar stations. There was no loss of ability in the air, but some loss of ability to concentrate, or get airborne in time. Since the primary objective at that point was to destroy the RAF as a viable force, what was the point of destroying their ability to get airborne. The Luftwaffe needed to get the british into the air, and destroy the supply of pilots. Bombing airfields and sector stations doesnt do that. it destroys aircraft (not many though, and most werent even fighters) and does little or nothing in reducing the number of precious pilots. It does not reduce the effectiveness of individual pilots in the air, and does not completely affect the ability of the RAF to respond. And, the much vaunted "breakthrough" did what????? By next morning all but ventnor was in action, and the RAF airborne. The LW did sc*w up their attacks on the 13th, but putting that aside, ther is NO evidence that the RAF had suffered any significant downgrading in capability as a result of those attacks.


The importance of the radar was not that it assisted in the vectoring of aircraft so much, as it allowed the British to shift airborne reserves from one sector of the battle to another. In essence it gave their forces "mobility"to move around and engage. But by the 15th August that was largely an academic argument. Dowding and park were so short of reserves that they could not afford to concentrate significantly. most attacks in Mid Aigust were never greater than squadron strength. In those situations, tha advantages of radar were limited, if any. FC was still receiving reports from the observer Corps and undamaged radars and were still able to mount an effective defence.

Attacks on the Radar stations might have yielded better results, if the germans had the strehgth to both suppreess all the radars (or a significant number of them) and push through to absolutley obliterate all the airfilds so that the airborne RAF could not land on. There was little or no prospect of that ever happening.

Sustained attacks on the radars as a means of defeating the RAF is a populist myth in my opinion. There was no way for the LW to defeat the RAF. Except by invasion

 

[stona]

Good grief,I wonder why Dowding,and others,expended so much time and effort in convincing the treasury to stump up the cash for it if it wasn't really a vital part of his air defence system. They could have saved some money,actually quite a lot of money

The invention of radar in 1935 revolutionised fighter tactics. Previously patrols and sweeps were the only reliable way of finding enemy aircraft. The experiments with sound detection,demonstrated to Dowding at Greatstone succeeded only in identifying a milkman's horse and cart. Radar promised much in the mid 1930s and by giving early warning the hope was that it would eliminate the need for standing patrols,wearing out engines,wasting fuel and tiring air crews.

Radar allowed what came to be called "forward interception". It was demonstrated in a series of 1936/1937 experiments at Biggin Hill. The conclusions are clear.

"Provided that the sector operations room could be supplied with the position of bombers at one minute intervals,correct to within two miles,it should be possible to direct fighter aircraft to within three miles of them. This is sufficient to ensure interception in average conditions of visibility."

It was absolutely vital for tracking the incoming bombers and for vectoring the fighters to intercept those bombers,you are incorrect to state otherwise. This is how it worked as a force multiplier.

The Observer Corps could only track and estimate a formations height when it was far too late to launch an interception.It took a SpitfireI what,about seven minutes to reach 15,000 feet after it took off? Nearly ten minutes to 20,000 feet. Radar gave them the time to get there.

According to the official Signals historian if these experiments had not been initiated (by Tizard and Dowding) in July 1936 then, "it is doubtful whether Fighter Command could have been adequately prepared for the Battle of Britain."

You may poo poo the significance of radar in the integrated system,even call it a "populist myth" but I haven't seen an explanation of how Fighter Command was to manage its interceptions without it. The entire strategy of forward interception so successfully used by Park throughout the battle was based on radar detection.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Ascent]

If you're going for the Radars, and it will be obvious that's what you're doing, then I shall straight away improve the AA defences. Historically they may not have been very effective but here we know what targets you're going for and if you're going to have any chance of hitting such a relativly small target you're going to have to do it at low level making you an easier target. It may not destroy you but it may well put your aim off.

Would barrage ballons affect the CH system? unfortunatley I don't know enough about the subject to say. If not then you can bet hundreds of those would be going up.

Next thing I'll do is start setting up dummy transmitters. Can you afford to ignore these new transmitters? Have the British developed a new system? now your effort is diluted.

Would all this make a difference? Well it is a what if. I'm not saying that your plan wouldn't work but I doubt it would be as plain sailing as you seem to be suggesting. As soon as you try something different your opponent will react, they're not just going to sit there and do nothing.

 

[wiking85]

If you're going for the Radars, and it will be obvious that's what you're doing, then I shall straight away improve the AA defences. Historically they may not have been very effective but here we know what targets you're going for and if you're going to have any chance of hitting such a relativly small target you're going to have to do it at low level making you an easier target. It may not destroy you but it may well put your aim off.

Would barrage ballons affect the CH system? unfortunatley I don't know enough about the subject to say. If not then you can bet hundreds of those would be going up.

Next thing I'll do is start setting up dummy transmitters. Can you afford to ignore these new transmitters? Have the British developed a new system? now your effort is diluted.

Would all this make a difference? Well it is a what if. I'm not saying that your plan wouldn't work but I doubt it would be as plain sailing as you seem to be suggesting. As soon as you try something different your opponent will react, they're not just going to sit there and do nothing.

There was a reason the Ju87 was removed from the BoB; it was taking too many losses from the RAF AND AAA around radar sites. AAA was pretty dangerous to the necessary low level attacks that the Germans had to launch to actually hit and knock out the stations.

The dummy transmitters I think could be discerned easily because they won't be generating a signal and the Germans could hear the signals coming from the stations.

 

[Ascent]

When I say dummy transmitters I do mean something kicking out a signal of some kind. It doesn't haave to be a usable signal just something that will get noticed.

 

[wiking85]

When I say dummy transmitters I do mean something kicking out a signal of some kind. It doesn't haave to be a usable signal just something that will get noticed.

Then all it would lack would be the receivers; for that level of effort it would just make more sense to build more stations and add the receivers, which IIRC were the easier part of the equation to add to the set up.

 

[Juha]

Well I've had enough of this now but there was a gap created on 12 August which the Luftwaffe exploited in its attacks on Lympne,Hawkinge,Portsmouth and Ventnor which were not tracked and not intercepted before they bombed,something that both Dowding and Park always tried to achieve. On 17th September Leigh Mallory reported to Dowding on wing patrols,including Baders fanciful claims. On Park's copy of the report he has simply noted "Did these wings engage before targets were bombed?" (Mason,"Battle over Britain" and Higham,"Royal Air Force") The answer of course was no.

A case of "Sir,we have reports that they are bombing Portsmouth".

After the attacks on Chain Home and the airfields a force of more than 100 Ju 88s of KG 51,120 Bf 110s of ZG 2 and 25 Bf 109s of JG 53 formed up over the French coast completely undetected .
They were well on the way to their target by the time (11.45 am) they were finally detected by Poling. The Observer Corps was unsure where they were going,first reports suggested the Brighton area. In fact 70 Ju 88s bombed Portsmouth unintercepted. When the RAF arrived they did not chance Portsmouth's flak but attacked the withdrawing force shooting down one Ju 88 which crashed off Bognor Regis. The Ventnor attack was also unintercepted. 609 squadron finally arrived to find a large number (they said 200) German aircraft over the island.

If that's not a hole in the radar coverage I don't know what is.

The sector control system is almost useless without the radar. With out its "long range vision" the system did not have time to react to the incoming raids effectively.

I'd be amazed if British AAA shot down 1 in 5 Luftwaffe aircraft in the period. Even if it did,that's not going to compensate for the destruction of Fighter Command who presumably destroyed the other 4 out of 5.

Cheers

Steve

According to Stephen Bungay
It was a CHL station which first to pick up something big heading towards Brighton at 1145. Portsmouth's AA and FC shot down 11 Ju 88s of KG 51, both sides lost 10 fighters, too.
and in the evening Kesselring sent 3 small raids on coastal towns in Kent to test the damage done to the detection system. Radio traffic clearly indicated that the defenders had located all 3 raids precisely. Rye RDF station had come back on the air at noon, The other 2 in Kent were working within 6 hours. Ventnor was out of action for 3 days because the power supply had been cut and a mobile generator had to be brought in. In order to further misled the LW about its success at Ventnor, dummy radio signals were sent out as repairs were going on.

 

[stona]

The Portsmouth raid was not detected, as it should have been,as it assembled over the French coast.
The raid on Portsmouth was detected at 11.45 by Poling,agreed.
The RAF did not engage until after the Luftwaffe bombing, a primary objective of 11 Group and the point of forward interception. They were unable to make the interception soon enough due to the lack of what we would today call early warning.
Our loss figures are not exactly the same but that's not the point anyway.

Has anyone come up for a plan for forward interception,11 Group's primary tactic to try and prevent or disrupt the bombing,without radar yet?

Cheers

Steve

 

[Glider]

A couple of points. Just because one raid wasn't picked up doesn't mean that the whole system was a failure. The radars were difficult to knock out because of their girder construction.
I don't know if the germans were able to monitor the signals at that stage of the war, after all there was a gap knocked in the radar but the Luftwaffe didn't pick it up.
AA guns were in short supply but the AA guns that could be spared were around the Radar sites.

As an aside the RAF used tracking fighters to follow the German raids once they crossed the coast to support the Observer Corps as the radar was only outward looking

 

[Juha]

The Portsmouth raid was not detected, as it should have been,as it assembled over the French coast.
The raid on Portsmouth was detected at 11.45 by Poling,agreed.

And it was detected by a CHL station, after all they seemed to have been a bit more useful than you thought earlier, next to Poling CH station according to Bungay

The RAF did not engage until after the Luftwaffe bombing, a primary objective of 11 Group and the point of forward interception. They were unable to make the interception soon enough due to the lack of what we would today call early warning.

Maybe, but coastal targets were difficult to defend and as controllers were humans, the quality of fighter control varied, in Sept 40 KG 55 succeeded to bomb Bristol A/C Coy at Filton, N of Bristol, and they suffered the first fighter attack when already in the bombing run and the only loss before the He 111s dropped their bombs was shot down by HAA.

Our loss figures are not exactly the same but that's not the point anyway.

Bunguy's figure is in the line with The Blitz Then and Now Vol 1 and The BoB T&N, so IMHO the right one. Only one of the 15 Ju 88As that attacked Ventnor was llost, that of the CO of the Geschwader.

Has anyone come up for a plan for forward interception,11 Group's primary tactic to try and prevent or disrupt the bombing,without radar yet?

Without radar standing patrols might have been the only way to protect the coastal targets, Observer Corps might have been enough for the inland targets. On Standing patrols, FC had to use them in Autumn 40, because they were the only answer against high flying fighter bombers

 

[parsifal]

Radar was important, but other nations had radar. It was the air defence system that was revolutionary, and there were multiple layers to that system. If the entire radar network could be knocked out it would have had a significant effect, but they never achieved that, nor was it an attainable goal given the resources available to the LW. There is no evidence that the successful attacks on the 12th had any significant effect on fighting capacity that I can see, either on the day itself, or as a long term loss of capability. Perhaps if a sustained campaign against the radars was undertaken, that might have had an effect, but that would only have occurred if the Germans had expended a lot of prior effort actually gathering intell on the matter, and would, in turn have been likely to come to the attention of the British. Attacking radar stations was in many ways counter to the LW primary objective to destroy the RAF which required pilots to be killed. Taking out radars might let airfields to be bombed, but you dont kill pilots by bombing a/c on the ground. And Britiain had no real shortage of machines, it was pilots that were their achilles heel.

Sorry if the realities confronting you upsets your vision of the perfect plan. You do have a point if the radar network could be taken out on a wide scale and for a long period, and provided the germans then had the resources to fully exploit that situation. But they were never able to take out the full network, never able to do it for a long period, didnt even know what it was for really, or how it worked in the overall defence system. None of that ever happened, and was unlikely to ever happen given the situation and resources. Plus a successful campaign against the radar stations still does not remove the RAF, which means air supremacy has not been achieved.

I am convinced attacking radar sites is a total dud as far as achieving the necessary situation for a cross channel attack.