WW1 Paved the Way for the Battle of Britain.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

The fact remains that the Luftwaffe lost a lot of aircraft, both in Poland and in the Battle of France, that seriously degraded their abilities.

I partially agree. Poland was a victory march for the Luftwaffe, they wiped out the Polish Air Force in a matter of days .Not to downplay the PAF, they fought bravely but were essentially steamrolled. They lost 250-300 aircraft in total, but only 93 of these were to enemy action: 13 Bf 109, 9 Bf 110, 27 Do 17, 25 He 111, 16 Ju 87, 3 Hs 123. This probably includes losses to everything, ie. Polish AA. PAF fighters had little chance as they could hardly catch up with LW bombers. As far as the losses go though, the LW had more and better aircraft (they dumped obsolate versions like Jumo engined 109s and 110s for example) by the end of September 1939 than at the start.

France was another matter, there the LW indeed had serious losses, as a matter of fact it rivaled the losses as though the only serious was the bombers which strenght fell by about 200 aircraft compared to the begining of the campaign, but all other strenght was maintained or even improved. As a sidenote, they handed the RAF's and the FAF their respective assess (the former lost some 900 aircraft, the latter was simply annihilated) and were instrumental in creating a strategical position in Western Europe that was simply not going to change until the Americans entered the war. The French Army, the only one that could hope to defeat the German army was defeated, and the Brits were kicked out of the continent, and everyone knew they just can't come back on their own.

Add the losses between the time of Dunkirk and the "start" of the BoB in August and it is clear that the Luftwaffe could not sustain a campaign to "take" Great Britain. It's laugable to think that they could.

Laughable or not, they did exactly that, from mid-August 1940 to mid-May 1941. With the war industry on peacetime footing. Even with the Kriegsmarine's weakness that prohibited a landing (certainly in 1940), they could keep up an air campaign until Britain sinks into the sea..

The Luftwaffe was a very young service. There was no depth of experience in their officer corps, unlike the RAF, which is of course the world's oldest independent air force.

Silly. First of all all this empty boasting about the RAF - I find it difficult to find a talented officer amongst the rows of aristocratic idiots, to be frank. At least I can find no other reason why they appeared to have no single idea what to do with all those aircraft during the whole war. Certainly between 1939 and 1940 they seemed to have done nothing but f.ing up all the time - BC was forced to bomb at night when they could hit virtually nothing, the expediationary air force they sent over to the continent was wiped out with nearly 1000 aircraft lost, and as for Dunkerque, well, they managed to score of 92 German aircraft, with only 37 fighters amongst them, for the loss of 106 RAF fighters.

Secondly that 'very young air service' had a top brass made up by people who were flying in combat before the 'world's oldest independent air force' came into being, with top/mid-level commanders like Moelders, Osterkamp Richthofen, Sperrle, Stumpf, Kesselring etc. who had seen actual combat flying and organisation in Spain. A little reading wouldn't hurt you as a matter of fact.. They had top notch aircraft to do their bidding, and in sufficient numbers, and the service was technologically advanced - look at the bomb sights, or blind bombing equipment for example, the RAF simply didn't have such, neither it had, on avarage either fighters like the Luftwaffe had (mostly Hurricanes) nor bombers (mostly Wellingtons and Blenheims), nor close support aircraft (err... Battle )

Considering how much younger and more inexperienced they were supposed to be, they seem to have built a better and larger air force on all levels by 1940.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by 609_Huetz

a.) The abysmal intelligence service of the OKL. Their CO Oberst Beppo Schmidt reported on 19.July 1940 that the 110 and the 109 were both much superior to anything the RAF could and would field during the upcoming campaign. In addition, his report doesn't underestimate the effect of radar, it didn't even mention it!

c.) Strategical/Tactical Errors. Intially, the Germans did pick their targets well in accordance of their goals for the campaign (radar, airfields, etc.)

The two statements seem to be at odds with each other. On hand - a logical fallacy often repeated in British BoB literature - it claims the Germans didn't even know about radar, so poor was their intelligence - another favourite British theme - yet they somehow kept bombing them still.

Now either Göring should have played lottery instead of beim RM of the LW, for being so lucky picking targets he supposedly did not even know of, OR the Beppo Schmidt report was hardly the only German intelligence material, nor the only considered in mission planning, and British historians (who often state a ridiculus amount of wishful commentary regarding the 'truth' vs this report) simply - probably also out of complete ignorance of German intel during WW2 - simply set up a strawman arguement to illustrate how ingenious the British, and in contrast how stupid the Germans were.

IMHO Beppo's report was mostly correct, he made one cardinal serious mistake, when he underestimated current fighter production - though his numbers would be quite correct a few months before, as British production was just about ramped up in mid-1940 from its modest levels, also inspired by the state of the Army after Dunkerque.

OTOH the British also seem to have very faint idea what was happening on the other side of the channel, they had no clear idea how many planes the Germans had, how many were they producing, and where they were located in France, nor did they had any idea on German radar (and for about a year or two, knew next to nothing about it) or German radio navigation and blind bombing systems. So on what ground do they criticize German intel in 1940, I do not know.

[Blakduk]

It's quite silly to question the LW as being the preeminent airforce in the world in 1940- they were better equipped and better led in tactics than then RAF. During the BoB the RAF learned some very hard lessons, the ill-conceived Defiant and 'Vic' formations are prime examples. In 1941 the RAF's performance over France was pathetic- the attrition in Spitfires alone was almost criminally negligent.
The BoB campaign was really aimed at imposing a cost on the British and challenging the will of their citizens to continue hostilities against Germany when they were cast out of the continent of Europe. The intransigence of Churchill and the unexpected resilience of the populace were what thwarted the German offensive.
The British failed to learn the lesson however and made exactly the same mistakes against the Germans when they started to take the offensive in the air. The Germans developed a coordinated air defence, chose which raids to confront, and the German people displayed the same stoicism as the British had when bombs fell on their cities. The RAF performance during the Dieppe raid was a travesty.
What the Germans didn't do however was gear their industry for full war production until Speer took over in late 1943- far too late. The LW never acquired a large enough strategic reserve and each pilot basically flew until he was dead, captured or crippled.

The attrition finished them in the end- their men were men after all, not ubermensch.

[Blakduk]

Kurfurst- the Germans knew about the British radar, but it was so far inferior to the German's that they dismissed it. They failed to realise how the radar information was used as part of an integrated intelligence gathering network to give the RAF dispatchers an almost real-time picture of what was happening.
The British mistakenly overestimated the LW capabilities and geared production to match it- they believed the German propoganda!

[Blakduk]

Back on topic- the fact that the Germans invested a lot of energy into developing the Knickebein radio guidance system may have been stimulated by their difficulties finding targets in WW1. I can't find a direct reference that suggests that but it seems reasonable.

[609_Huetz]

Maybe a bit got lost in translation here: of course Schmidt, Goering and the LW were aware of radar, that's why they initially focused their raids on those as well.

What they did underestimate was the effectiveness of the RAF as long as they could fly intercept missions only and did not have to waste fuel and their pilot's strenght by sending up patrol after patrol in anticipation of the big one.

In addition, the LW didn't seem to be aware what they had to do in order to keep radar down.

Back OT, I do not think that the Germans learned much from their Gotha and Zeppeling raids on Britain, except (as pointed out by Blakduk) the need for targeting systems to increase precision of navigation and bombing.

What they did not learn is that in order to keep up a strategic bombing campaign you will have to find a cure for the disease, not the symptoms. That means you can not excpect to win such a campaign by only bombing airfields and forcing the enemy to fight it out, that's when the airwar is starting to resemble the worst battles of attrition in the trenches of WW1.

What the USAAF and Bomber Command did very well during the later stages (despite bombing the cities) was their choice of targets. A/C factories, fuel depots, training facilities etc..

[winny]

Originally Posted by Kurfürst

The two statements seem to be at odds with each other. On hand - a logical fallacy often repeated in British BoB literature - it claims the Germans didn't even know about radar, so poor was their intelligence - another favourite British theme - yet they somehow kept bombing them still.

Now either Göring should have played lottery instead of beim RM of the LW, for being so lucky picking targets he supposedly did not even know of, OR the Beppo Schmidt report was hardly the only German intelligence material, nor the only considered in mission planning, and British historians (who often state a ridiculus amount of wishful commentary regarding the 'truth' vs this report) simply - probably also out of complete ignorance of German intel during WW2 - simply set up a strawman arguement to illustrate how ingenious the British, and in contrast how stupid the Germans were.

IMHO Beppo's report was mostly correct, he made one cardinal serious mistake, when he underestimated current fighter production - though his numbers would be quite correct a few months before, as British production was just about ramped up in mid-1940 from its modest levels, also inspired by the state of the Army after Dunkerque.

OTOH the British also seem to have very faint idea what was happening on the other side of the channel, they had no clear idea how many planes the Germans had, how many were they producing, and where they were located in France, nor did they had any idea on German radar (and for about a year or two, knew next to nothing about it) or German radio navigation and blind bombing systems. So on what ground do they criticize German intel in 1940, I do not know.

I'll tell you why I can criticise German intelligence..

Of course they knew what Radar was, they already had Freya..
However, in '39 they sent a zepplin over (General Wolfgang Milch) to see what the giant masts were. They were expecting to hear some kind of response from the masts, but they had discounted using HF radio for radar (because they were using VHF and UHF) it simply did not occur to them that what they were looking at was radar because it was so primative.

They sent another zepplin over because they thought that there must be a defect with thier own radio equipment and by massive coincidence on that day the station they were looking at was switched off for repairs. This further confused them, and they stopped investigating them.

Once the battle had started

They also continually bombed costal and bomber command airfields whilst trying to destroy fighter comand, thay had no knowledge of the civillian repair network, no idea about british aircraft production and they believed thier own 'kill' count (in this aspect they were different from RAF who were more concerned with how many of thier own planes thay had lost)

In September Scmhid reported to Goering that the RAF had 177 aircraft left (they had 659)
At no point during the battle did the LW have a clear picture of Fighter Commands structure, they failed to exploit the strengths they had, the use of the fighter arm was, well, incompetent. They did not look after thier men, they swictched tactics and suffered from mission creep. All because Schmid (as Galland pointed out 'Trimmed his salis to the wind' in order to please his superiors, not give them the truth)

Problem is if you say anything negative about the LW on here you get a load of 'no they weren't' posts. Can we at least have some realism here?
To use the 'well the RAF didn't know what was going on either' argument is juvenille, they didn't need to at that point they just needed to know what was coming and try and stop it.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Blakduk

It's quite silly to question the LW as being the preeminent airforce in the world in 1940- they were better equipped and better led in tactics than then RAF. During the BoB the RAF learned some very hard lessons, the ill-conceived Defiant and 'Vic' formations are prime examples. In 1941 the RAF's performance over France was pathetic- the attrition in Spitfires alone was almost criminally negligent.
The BoB campaign was really aimed at imposing a cost on the British and challenging the will of their citizens to continue hostilities against Germany when they were cast out of the continent of Europe. The intransigence of Churchill and the unexpected resilience of the populace were what thwarted the German offensive.
The British failed to learn the lesson however and made exactly the same mistakes against the Germans when they started to take the offensive in the air. The Germans developed a coordinated air defence, chose which raids to confront, and the German people displayed the same stoicism as the British had when bombs fell on their cities. The RAF performance during the Dieppe raid was a travesty.
What the Germans didn't do however was gear their industry for full war production until Speer took over in late 1943- far too late. The LW never acquired a large enough strategic reserve and each pilot basically flew until he was dead, captured or crippled.

The attrition finished them in the end- their men were men after all, not ubermensch.

Very good, well balanced post.

There's no reason getting worked up when studying history, unless we want to reach wrong conclusions

I mean, one time we hear how the RAF was fighting tooth and nail while outnumbered (the legend of the few) because we like boosting the heroic aspect of the allied war effort, then we hear how the RAF had better training and production to boost the ingenious aspect of the allied war effort and make us feel good that the allies beat the axis in their own game (industry), many times from the exact same people.

Well, it doesn't take a genius to understand that these statements openly contradict each other unless we provide the correct frame of reference for each one. We can't say the RAF had the better manufacturing and logistics AND was fighting an uphill battle at the same time. What we can say is that the RAF was in situation A until that point during the battle, then they learned from experience and their preparations started having a result which got them to a better situation B during a certain month.


Don't get me wrong, i'm glad the axis lost, but when studying history there's no need to prop up the actions of anybody.

The way i see the whole WWII in Europe is that Germany was all about trying to produce the absolute best in terms of manufacturing, equipment, new technologies and training of the people in their armed forces without having sufficient strategic resources and logistics planning in place to ensure this would work long term. Naturally, after a point in time they couldn't keep up and their system collapsed by the allied decision to do the opposite: focus on outnumbering them first, essentially throwing bodies and inferior equipment to the fire to stem the tide while stockpiling strategic reserves (of all kinds), then turning that strategic advantage into a quality advantage at a time where the axis quality factor was on the decline.

If we wanted to draw an internet meme analogy, Germany was putting 100 ninjas on the field against a haphazard crowd of 1000 less experienced and worse equipped enemies. It worked initially, but then attrition took its toll on numbers, training was accelerated to replace losses and their blacksmiths lacked the metals to give them shinny,razor sharp swords to fight with, while the crowd of 1000 was growing in numbers, improving in experience and getting better equipment, so they lost

Originally Posted by baronWastelan

And yet, the RAF still only avoided defeat in BoB owing to faulty German strategy.

lol The RAF had around 800 pilots that went up to meet every raid with out fail why? because they knew that the rest of the war hinged on that battle, if hitler had gained control of the British Isles it would have been a different outcome in the war of this im sure.
The RAF won because of sheer tenacity and bloody-mindedness of its pilots and pilots of the occupied countries that flew for the RAF, and the radar system that been set up was second to non and designed make the full use of its mimimal resources.
Failure in german strategy was just an example of Goerings pompus ignorance about his advensaries and his understanding of supply issues effecting the Luft at that time.

[baronWastelan]

I'm surprised to see people on here discussing 'Battle of Britain' as though it was part of a campaign to put Britain under Nazi control. I've not seen any evidence that Hitler had any real desire or plan to land Wehrmacht units in England. In fact Hitler's only concern about the British in 1940 after June was to keep them at bay just long enough to conclude the campaign in Russia which he expected to finish in the autumn of 1941.