[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by winny

It is a victory, it's not as obvious because there was no mass surrender, or no symbolic flag raising, or no territory gained. However it was a victory. If one side achieves thier goal and the other dosn't, it's not a draw. It was a battle for air supremacy ,'to destroy Fighter Command, in the air and on the ground', not part of the invasion, the invasion was dependant on the outcome of the air battle.

Great Britain achieved its goal when Germany surrendered.

Guys, how can you possibly not see that after fighting for months over the Channel, the RAF paid a HUGE price in terms of aeroplanes and above all pilots, and so did Germany, but the Luftwaffe had its forces in Africa, Greece, Russia, Norway and mainland Europe? How can that be a defeat? It was a large scale skirmish, which produced almost equal losses and became relevant only when the USA joined and used England as a massive aircraft and troop carrier.

It was also a big confidence boost, Britain had 'stood firm', the first country in Europe to do so. I can, and do, think of it as a victory, quite small in the scheme of things, numbers wise, but vital. It was also a battle that favoured the defenders, for all sorts of reasons, not least The Channel, but we've had that for centuries, the Island Mentality.

That I completely agree with. And I'm afraid that this "island mentality" is confusing the judgement of you guys, again I'm not expecting this thing to be understood by the common people, but people like you, who have an interest in aviation and history can't talk about this in terms of victory and defeat.

So what do you make of Pearl Harbour? Was that a Japanese victory? It was a part of a larger conflict.

You cannot ignore the complete failure of German high command, they are after all part of the battle. The ifs and maybes can never be known. All we do know is that Hitler and his generals never returned to try and finish off Fighter Command.

I'm not ignoring that, the German high command took wrong decisions constantly after Dunkirk, but this doesn't mean that they thought they were doing the right thing.

I know we've got previous and I'd like to keep this civil, if it wasn't a draw, and the LW didn't achive their objective how can you say that it was'nt a victory, if not for Britain, then at the very least for Fighter Command. They did their job. The LW couldn't.

I appreciate the fact you want to keep it civil, and I hope you see I have the same intentions.

The RAF Fighter Command was put in front of an extremely steep learning curve, truth is that the RAF flew and fought with territorial advantage and had to employ only figthers, not bombers or other complex aircraft.

The opposition they put up against the Germans was exemplar, but in some phases desperate. Still their determination together with the ineptitude of the German command meant that they could put up a fight with inferior machines and still be able to limit damage.

In some way they were given a task somehow simpler than the German one: they knew what what they were defending, the Germans didn't really know what they were attacking.