The Battle of Britain Was The First Defeat For The German Luftwaffe.

[JimmyBlonde]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

Jimmy, I appreciate your input, it would be useful if you could give the source of your quotes though.

I came to the conclusion that there will never be an agreement about the outcome of the aerial battle of 1940, that's why I regard it as a draw.

The most obvious fact is that Germany didn't achieve its goals as expected, Britain managed to defend his status quo of non invaded country (apart for the small Channel islands).

This can obviously look as a blatant victory of the RAF, but there's more into it than just this conclusion.

The aerial battle that raged over the Channel and England was in a certain way a war of attrition: the frontline didn't move, the two contending parts threw their best air force capabilities, but without a proper defeat of either of the sides, just a weakening of their potential.

Focussing on the simple fact that the Germans didn't achieve what they wanted with the Operatio Sea Lion doesn't change the fact that it's Great Britain who paid the heavier toll, because of the extended bombing damage, other than the RAF losses. It's hard to consider that a win.

I believe that it (rightly) became a matter of national pride, which is completely understandable, but the connotation of victory is hardly the outcome of the Battle of Britain.

The Battle of Britain was just an attack on a siege situation, if we talk about winning the war then I couldn't agree more, but the Battle of Britain (again, mistakenly named so), was just an early attack wave against a fortification, which surely went monumentally wrong, but it wasn't there that the whole war was lost.

Being lazy I tried to keep the quotes in the realm of common knowledge to avoid specific referencing. The Adolf Galland quote is probably from "Die Erste und Die Leszte" and I don't know where the Kreipe quote came from in particular but it is a well known and commonly used one.

In regards to the rest of your post, the OP did not ask if the Battle of Britain was a victory for the RAF which makes your points, though logically sound enough to be debatable, contextually irrelevant. I'm not going to be drawn into a debate which doesn't have any bearing on the point under discussion in this thread.

But...

The primary motivation of the RAF and Britain itself in 1939-41 was to play for time and to survive. The goal of any besieged faction who cannot mount an offensive of their own.

They achieved those aims, although at great cost, and I would call that a victory but given the decline of the British Empire in subsequent decades and the recent resurgence of right wing nationalism it might have been a Pyrrhic victory as you suggest.

[Al Schlageter]

If "Germany didn't achieve its goals as expected", then Germany lost and GB won, PERIOD.

Germany lost 1,922 aircraft (including 879 fighters, 80 Stukas and 881 bombers). German Luftwaffe losses from August 1940 until March 1941 were 2,840 aircraft. Casualties of the German aircrew were 3,363 KIA, 2,117 WIA and 2,641 taken prisoner.

The Lw never really recovered from these losses.

Germany paid the heavier toll as GB was not knocked out of the war. Damage during the BoB and the Blitz was quickly repaired.

[ATAG_Snapper]

Originally Posted by 41Sqn_Stormcrow

What do you mean with "cope with it"?


d

I was getting back on track to the OP. Jim Blonde's reply was very similar to the one I gave the OP at the very beginning of this convoluted thread.

[ATAG_Dutch]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

but it wasn't there that the whole war was lost.

By whom? And there we have it.

Sorry folks, I said I was out. I tried. Honest.

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by Al Schlageter

If "Germany didn't achieve its goals as expected", then Germany lost and GB won, PERIOD.

that's the tangible evidence I was looking for

Germany lost 1,922 aircraft (including 879 fighters, 80 Stukas and 881 bombers). German Luftwaffe losses from August 1940 until March 1941 were 2,840 aircraft. Casualties of the German aircrew were 3,363 KIA, 2,117 WIA and 2,641 taken prisoner.

Interesting numbers, but I have different ones

From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain

GB Strength at the beginning of the conflict:

1,963 serviceable aircraft

Germany strength at the beginning of the conflict:

2,550 serviceable aircraft.

544 aircrew killed 2,698 aircrew killed
422 aircrew wounded
967 captured
638 MIA bodies identified by British Authorities
1,547 aircraft destroyed 1,887 aircraft destroyed


So Germany had more planes and lost slightly more, but in fact it proportionally lost less aircraft. The huge difference in terms of aircrew is because apart for the 109s, all attacking aircraft were multi-crew (the skilled crew members like pilots and navigators lost were in similar numbers of the ones lost by the RAF).

As I mentioned before, it was attrition and it caused similar losses on both ends.

The Lw never really recovered from these losses.

the LW neve recovered from the losses of the Eastern Campaign, not the Battle of Britain. Thanks to replacements they still had pretty much the same number of aircraft when the BoB ended and Barbarossa started.

Germany paid the heavier toll as GB was not knocked out of the war.
Damage during the BoB and the Blitz was quickly repaired.

43000 civilians killed and 46000 wounded is small numbers to you?

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by Dutch_851

By whom? And there we have it.

Sorry folks, I said I was out. I tried. Honest.

*facepalm* I'm sorry, I can't continue on this with you Dutch..

[ATAG_Dutch]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

*facepalm* I'm sorry, I can't continue on this with you Dutch..

Why?

'The war was lost' puts you in the Nazi camp. Or at best the axis powers camp.

'The war concluded with the outcome that it did because.....' shows unbiased opinion.

'The war was lost' demonstrates what I would refer to as bias.

Not in a very clever way, either.

[JimmyBlonde]

Originally Posted by Snapper

I was getting back on track to the OP. Jim Blonde's reply was very similar to the one I gave the OP at the very beginning of this convoluted thread.

Yeah but what do you mean specifically? How did who cope with it? Do you mean the Luftwaffe as a force or the aircrews themselves?

The battle didn't seem to have any real overall influence on the way the Luftwaffe operated as a force. No serious strategic revisions were made and no big restructuring took place. Some people might have liked them to occur but it seems that the Luftwaffe was considered merely a supporting arm of the German war machine rather than a driving force behind it. Time and resources were against Germany also, all but the most delusional must have known it.

As for the crews, maybe biographies, diaries or PoW debriefings can tell. They remained optimistic enough to fight hard for the years after but I'm sure that a few must have seen the writing on the wall. Not many though, most people aren't that imaginative and contemplating defeat is not a good warrior trait.

[ACE-OF-ACES]

Let's see if we can not sum up this thread up..

AXIS 0
ALLIEDS 1

Nuff said?

[JimmyBlonde]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

the LW neve recovered from the losses of the Eastern Campaign, not the Battle of Britain. Thanks to replacements they still had pretty much the same number of aircraft when the BoB ended and Barbarossa started.



43000 civilians killed and 46000 wounded is small numbers to you?

The losses in terms or aircraft were trivial to the Luftwaffe and RAF alike, both sides had the capacity to produce more aircraft than they had pilots to fly them. The kill figures just make a good score-card for the drones who provide the labour.

The losses in experienced crews were the deciding factor.

Basically the core of Luftwaffe veterans was depleted to a point which subsequent attrition never allowed full recovery from whereas, on the RAF side, they didn't have that many combat veterans to lose. Mainly the RAF lost inexperienced replacements with whom the British bought themselves time where they could probably withdrawn to the north and saved themselves the trouble since the Germans could not make a strategic impact on Britain by air power anyway, nor is it entirely convincing that they could have invaded in light of their entirely inferior naval strength and the logistical demands of such an undertaking.

Also, 43,000 fatalities looks like a big number, well, it is a big number. However, in terms of bombing casualties during WW2, is isn't really that big. Civilian losses during many late war allied raids reached totals like that in less than a week, sometimes even in a single raid. Take Dresden for example, current estimates put the toll from that one night at 25,000 killed. Hamburg, 50,000, Pforzheim, 18,000. In Tokyo the largest casualty figure from a single conventional raid is estimated to have been 88,000 killed in one night during February 1945. (Figures all from Wiki for what it's worth)

Destruction of civilian and industrial property is widely acknowledged as only having a marginal effect on the war effort by both sides, this is a well documented and incontrovertible fact. People can relocate, industry can go underground.

Just look at German aircraft production figures in 1944. The combined weight of the sustained RAF and USAAF bombing campaigns made absolutely no dent in German industrial capacity at all in regards to aircraft production. Figures show that production actually steadily increased during the entire campaign as demand increased. Basically the allied plan to disrupt aircraft production in the Reich by bombing factories was a total failure in terms of their specified objective and it wasn't until ground forces secured those centers that production halted.

The true success of their efforts came from the attrition of resistance and the depletion of strategic resources.