BBC James Holland - Battle of Britain

[dduff442]

It's funny how the 'when plucky little Britain stood alone' story has come to dominate all interpretations of the battle from either side's perspective.

Victory in the air was just the first step in a succession of feats -- each of increasing difficulty -- Germany needed to pull off in order to secure victory. Britain would not have thrown it's last resources into defending the SE or even defending London. The fighter Sqns would have been withdrawn and rebuilt if the BoB started to go wrong.

At that point, Hitler would have had the choice of gambling on a cross-channel attack (i.e. over 20+ miles of unsheltered atlantic waters), but without any navy to secure the sea lanes. One brief experiment was conducted with the landing barges... in daylight and with less than encouraging results.

Swarming across the channel en masse in darkness in their boats designed for inland waterways would have been an entirely different matter. Eisenhower had the most accurate weather forecast ever made in his hands when he ordered D-Day. Without similar information, Germany could have gotten lucky or it could have suffered an appalling fiasco.

Whether German air-landings would have resembled Eben Emael or Crete is anybody's guess but if they weren't much more like the former than the latter then all Germany's chances would have ended.

An German airhead on British soil would have been a deadly threat to Britain so at that point Fighter Command might have been expected to re-emerge with all the strength it could muster.

Cuisers and destroyers would have roamed the channel at night and, if they failed to cut German supplies, a BB could have been sacrificed on an end-run. Recalling the impact of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau etc. on convoys will illustrate the stupefying violence these machines could bring to bear on undefended merchants.

Five or six divisions would probably have defeated Britain's available field forces but you can't occupy a country the size of Britain with 5 Divisions. This was unfortunate for Hitler because sustaining even this force for a brief period was the absolute limit of Germany's logistical capabilities.

I'm Irish and, as Danes or Dutch or Portugese etc will tell you, there are few things as irritating as coming from a small country with a large neighbour possessing an assured sense of its own grandeur. Odd then, that this story is inverted when talking about the Battle of Britain. The prospect of invasion was one to be interpreted as an opportunity rather than as a risk.

Having talked up Germany's victories all through the summer of '40, Hitler was a victim of the expectations he had generated. If he didn't clinch it that year, however, he'd be left in exactly the same position as Napoleon: facing an adversary with unassailable naval power, a global trading network, ample supplies of everything Germany didn't have (oil, nickel, manganese, tungsten, rubber etc), willing to sustain the conflict literally for as long as necessary and able to do so for the foreseeable future. All exactly as in 1800-1812.

This wouldn't have been enough to secure an Allied victory, but Germany would never have known peace on its frontiers and sooner or later other powers would have joined the fight.

dduff

Originally Posted by Splitter

Sternjaeger, excellent post.

I understand what you are saying, but I think that by the time the 109's got over England, they were matched pretty well by the Spits. The 109 was more versatile and with all other things being equal, I would have rather been in a 109. But if my choice was whether to fight in a Spit or a 109 in the BoB, I would rather have been in the Spit. I figure that I could fight on fairly equal terms with the 109 and if I got shot down, I stood a decent chance of living through it and going back up again in a different aircraft.

If a pilot got shot down in a 109 (or had a mechanical failure for that matter) during the BoB, chances were that the war was over for him. If he stayed too long and burned too much fuel, he may or may not make it back to friendly territory. Plus, his job was usually to protect bombers which takes away from his offensive capabilities.

yeah, I'm not arguing over the tactical disadvantage of the Luftwaffe, I'm just saying that they had better aircrafts.

I would disagree that German bombers were adequate still in the BoB because they lost so many of them.

not that many actually, and turns out the Stuka had the lowest loss ratio (as I said it was counter-propaganda against the Stuka's "trumpets of Jericho" kinda fame) :

Luftwaffe losses in the BoB
(source "Kronika Bitvy o Britanii", M. Weidenhofer, Navrat 1991)

Type Losses
Junkers Ju 87 74
Junkers Ju 88 281
Dornier Do 17 171
Dornier Do 215 6
Heinkel He 56 31
Heinkel He 111 246
Heinkel He 115 28
Henschel Hs 126 7
Messerschmitt Bf 109 533
Messerschmitt Bf 110 229
Total 1562

Part of that was tactics for sure, but the Stuka in particular was too slow all of a sudden. It had done well in previous campaigns but had not faced the combination of decent enemy fighters backed by RADAR. I think the one common plane I would not have liked to fly in most in the BoB would have been the Stuka...the loss rate was just too high.

Too bad that both sides greatly inflated their numbers of "victories" after the battle as the numbers cannot really be trusted.

Historians have worked hard in the last years, the numbers I posted above are apparently quite accurate.

Imagine for a moment that the Nazi leadership had developed a good, fast, bomber prior to the BoB and had actually produced it in quantity. They had that ability, but they stayed with the planes that had worked in the past against more inferior forces. That's the arrogance I spoke of. With fewer bomber losses and a more focused bombing campaign, I don't think the RAF could have held out much longer. History might have been much different.

as Dutch_851 mentioned above, they had the Me110, helluva underrated machine.

As for the invasion of Russia...just a bad idea lol. Hitler and the gang thought they would roll over the Russians as they had done to opponents in Europe. They under estimated the Russians and therefore the time and resources it would take to defeat them. They didn't even prepare their troops with winter gear and their vehicles were not prepared for operations during a Russian winter. But, they didn't expect the campaign to take so long.

There is a measure of arrogance there I think. Hitler thought he could do what Napoleon could not. He thought the same equipment and tactics would work against Russia like they worked against the French and others previously conquered. He did not prepare for what became a brutal winter even by Russian standards.

I'm sorry to contradict you again mate, but that's approximate revisionism.
Germans weren't complete fools, they well knew that they stood a chance if they made it to Moscow. Everything was going according to plans, but then Hitler had one of his typical anal fits and decided to waste three weeks in the Dnepr area to get access to the coal mines, and that's the main reason why the Germans screwed up Barbarossa. If they stuck to the according plans and pushed straight to Moscow from the start he would have decapitated the Russian bear and things could have been quite different..

Basically, Hitler wasted a lot of resources and troops. There was a reason the Allies decided it was better to keep him in power rather than assassinating him...his decisions most often helped the Allied cause lol. Even his generals who were good military men were often left scratching their heads.

This is the cool things about history. It's not about the dates and the names, it's about what the players may have been thinking and the effects their decisions had on outcomes. The lessons, if there are any to be had, are in the "why". Historians have been debating those things since...well, sine the beginning of history .

Good chat.

Splitter

The real arrogance of the Germans was in the fact that they thought that the Allies wouldn't keep up and gear up for modern warfare in time. And if one side they got their ar$e kicked by the American technology, on the other side they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of Russian troops (20mln+ of military casualties: the Jewish holocaust is a joke compared to it..).

I agree, this is a good chat indeed

Originally Posted by kendo65

This presumes that the battle was a simple 'numbers' game. For the Germans the BIG strategic-level point of the whole aerial battle was to establish air superiority over the south of England so that an invasion could take place.

This they demonstrably failed to do. I think it is fair to say then that they lost the battle - i.e. failed to achieve their strategic objective, and that the British won - i.e. achieved their strategic objective of preventing the Germans from gaining air superiority!

The point is that the German strategy went "headless chicken" at some point, and they dispersed their potential. If things carried on for an extra six months I doubt the results of the battle would have been the same. It would be idiotic to say that the RAF didn't play an important part in the battle, but I would say that the outcome of the battle was more due to the German mistakes than to the RAF struggle.

Actually the RAF command and control, and Dowding and Park's management of the battle were hugely significant.

U really do overrate Dowding mate..

At the level of small-scale tactics (section, flight, squadron) the Germans definitely had the advantage early on, but I think it's fair to say they were comprehensively beaten at the operational and strategic levels.

And to say that 'they just decided to put things "on hold" ' brings to mind that old joke about the General telling his troops that they were "not retreating - just advancing in a different direction."

Operation Sea Lion was actually classified as "on hold", If you come to think of it, apart for the Jersey Islands nor Germany or Britain lost or gained any significant territory, and the Germans were confident that once they made it to Moscow they could come back and give a massive blow to Britain.. fortunately their boss was a tit..

[Splitter]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

yeah, I'm not arguing over the tactical disadvantage of the Luftwaffe, I'm just saying that they had better aircrafts.

not that many actually, and turns out the Stuka had the lowest loss ratio (as I said it was counter-propaganda against the Stuka's "trumpets of Jericho" kinda fame) :

Luftwaffe losses in the BoB
(source "Kronika Bitvy o Britanii", M. Weidenhofer, Navrat 1991)

Type Losses
Junkers Ju 87 74
Junkers Ju 88 281
Dornier Do 17 171
Dornier Do 215 6
Heinkel He 56 31
Heinkel He 111 246
Heinkel He 115 28
Henschel Hs 126 7
Messerschmitt Bf 109 533
Messerschmitt Bf 110 229
Total 1562



Historians have worked hard in the last years, the numbers I posted above are apparently quite accurate.



as Dutch_851 mentioned above, they had the Me110, helluva underrated machine.


I'm sorry to contradict you again mate, but that's approximate revisionism.
Germans weren't complete fools, they well knew that they stood a chance if they made it to Moscow. Everything was going according to plans, but then Hitler had one of his typical anal fits and decided to waste three weeks in the Dnepr area to get access to the coal mines, and that's the main reason why the Germans screwed up Barbarossa. If they stuck to the according plans and pushed straight to Moscow from the start he would have decapitated the Russian bear and things could have been quite different..

The real arrogance of the Germans was in the fact that they thought that the Allies wouldn't keep up and gear up for modern warfare in time. And if one side they got their ar$e kicked by the American technology, on the other side they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of Russian troops (20mln+ of military casualties: the Jewish holocaust is a joke compared to it..).

I agree, this is a good chat indeed

I really don't see a lot of contradictions, just small points on either side of similar conclusions .

On Stukas, they were withdrawn from combat operations after losing about 1/5 of their force in about 10 days (doing it from memory, forgive me if I am off). Planes like that need either skies that are cleared of enemy fighters or really slow enemy fighters. The Americans suffered similar losses with their dive bombers in the Pacific.

Hitler was the biggest problem the Nazis had militarily. Really...they guy could screw up a wet dream. He thought his time as a corporal running messages (rather brave I must say though) somehow qualified him to run military campaigns. After him, you have to look at his cronies as the incompetents in charge.

The generals were often very good military men. The soldiers were as good as any on any side. Their equipment was decent. The problem was always leadership (I'm separating military operations from political motivations obviously).

Making it to Moscow was a huge gamble and they greatly underestimated the Russian people. The Russians willingly sacrificed millions of civilian lives to stem the German tide...not something the Nazi leadership counted on. They certainly did not count on the T-34 either in quality or quantity. As I said in another thread, rule number one for aspiring dictators is DO NOT invade Russia lol. To expect the whole campaign to go like clockwork on schedule and to not prepare for contingencies (like General Winter) was pure foolishness which I think stemmed from Hitler's arrogance.

Germans were not fools, but Hitler and his cronies were.

BTW, I have never been clear on whether or not Hitler approved the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor prior to it happening. I know he turned around and declared war on the US, but I find it hard to believe that he thought bringing the US industrial might into the war was a good idea....though he was probably tired of lend-lease by then.

Splitter

[ATAG_Dutch]

The only reason Stuka losses were that low is because they were withdrawn from the Battle after being knocked down like proverbial flies on I think only two occasions. Similar reason for 'only' 229 Bf110's, as they weren't up to the job of a dedicated fighter, compared to 533 Bf109's, which were shot down by the terribly inferior Spitfires and Hurricanes with their so tiny as to be insignificant .303 'peashooters'.

However, most comparisons of losses tend to be inaccurate, as people rarely count overall losses on the British side. If we count total losses on both sides, including British bomber losses, the statistics become closer again.

I can't agree with the 'when Fighter Command was on its knees' bit though. This is another propaganda ploy. Fighter Command was never 'on its knees' as evidenced by the deployment of the 'Big Wings' from 12 Group on Sept 15th, and the massive psychological impact this had on the German crews. This was when they discovered they'd been getting nowhere, and the RAF was as strong as ever, contrary to their intelligence reports. At no point was any airfield out of commission for more than a day, although one airfield was abandoned as it was too close to France for the aircraft to get to altitude.

At the end of the Battle, Fighter Command had more available fighters and pilots than at the start. It was Park's tactic of sending them up squadron by squadron in rotation that gave the impression of small numbers. This tactic gave the RAF a highly 'target rich' environment to fight in.
The Luftwaffe certainly weren't as strong at the end as they were at the beginning, as their manufacturing and training output couldn't keep pace with their losses. Britain out-produced Germany in both these areas.
The fact that British aircraft were easier to fly well probably also helped in speeding up delivery of pilots to the front.

It's impossible to 'overrate' Dowding, or Park for that matter.
Dowding devised the most comprehensive and efficient air defence network in the world.
Park put it to excellent use. Its principles are still in use today.

As it happens, Park then went on to face Kesselring again in Malta, and he beat him there too.

Originally Posted by Dutch_851

The only reason Stuka losses were that low is because they were withdrawn from the Battle after being knocked down like proverbial flies on I think only two occasions. Similar reason for 'only' 229 Bf110's, as they weren't up to the job of a dedicated fighter, compared to 533 Bf109's, which were shot down by the terribly inferior Spitfires and Hurricanes with their so tiny as to be insignificant .303 'peashooters'.

dude, do not insist on this aspect: the Germans shot down some 601 Hurricanes and 357 Spitfires (which makes a total of 958 planes more or less). So, despite the tactical advantage of flying over its own territory, the RAF lost almost twice the number of fighters that the Germans did.. even if they lost the same number of planes it would have been a tactical failure for the RAF, considering their territorial advantage.

However, most comparisons of losses tend to be inaccurate, as people rarely count overall losses on the British side. If we count total losses on both sides, including British bomber losses, the statistics become closer again.

in addition to the aforementioned fighters, the RAF lost some 53 Blenheims and 76 other planes. Statistics are more accurate nowadays, the Luftwaffe lost circa 1600 planes, the RAF circa 1000.

I can't agree with the 'when Fighter Command was on its knees' bit though. This is another propaganda ploy. Fighter Command was never 'on its knees' as evidenced by the deployment of the 'Big Wings' from 12 Group on Sept 15th, and the massive psychological impact this had on the German crews. This was when they discovered they'd been getting nowhere, and the RAF was as strong as ever, contrary to their intelligence reports. At no point was any airfield out of commission for more than a day, although one airfield was abandoned as it was too close to France for the aircraft to get to altitude.

there were not enough pilots man, that is a known fact. The truth is that if the Fighter Command didn't get a break they would have found very hard to keep their planes in the air, simply because the pilot syllabus wasn't fast enough.

At the end of the Battle, Fighter Command had more available fighters and pilots than at the start. It was Park's tactic of sending them up squadron by squadron in rotation that gave the impression of small numbers. This tactic gave the RAF a highly 'target rich' environment to fight in.
The Luftwaffe certainly weren't as strong at the end as they were at the beginning, as their manufacturing and training output couldn't keep pace with their losses. Britain out-produced Germany in both these areas.
The fact that British aircraft were easier to fly well probably also helped in speeding up delivery of pilots to the front.

This is a common misconception: the Germans had already committed a huge number of planes for the Battle of Britain, they started it with the intended number of planes that they wanted, and then had to concentrate their resources on other industrial productions, hence the lower number of planes produced during the Battle of Britain; the British had to change pace and start building planes to catch up with the war. The numbers of planes produced per se doesn't really give any valuable perspective to the battle.

It's impossible to 'overrate' Dowding, or Park for that matter.
Dowding devised the most comprehensive and efficient air defence network in the world.
Park put it to excellent use. Its principles are still in use today.

As it happens, Park then went on to face Kesselring again in Malta, and he beat him there too.

I haven't put Dowding and Park on the same level: the former was an old fashioned but charismatic leader who gained popularity with the Battle of Britain (but bear in mind that his "brilliant intuition" was a simple consequence of the entry in service of the Radar system), and unfortunately he wasn't as successful when it came to night fighting issues.. Park was indeed a brilliant tactician, and IMHO is the man that made a real difference in the development of the RAF.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by dduff442

It's funny how the 'when plucky little Britain stood alone' story has come to dominate all interpretations of the battle from either side's perspective.

Victory in the air was just the first step in a succession of feats -- each of increasing difficulty -- Germany needed to pull off in order to secure victory. Britain would not have thrown it's last resources into defending the SE or even defending London. The fighter Sqns would have been withdrawn and rebuilt if the BoB started to go wrong.

At that point, Hitler would have had the choice of gambling on a cross-channel attack (i.e. over 20+ miles of unsheltered atlantic waters), but without any navy to secure the sea lanes. One brief experiment was conducted with the landing barges... in daylight and with less than encouraging results.

Swarming across the channel en masse in darkness in their boats designed for inland waterways would have been an entirely different matter. Eisenhower had the most accurate weather forecast ever made in his hands when he ordered D-Day. Without similar information, Germany could have gotten lucky or it could have suffered an appalling fiasco.

Whether German air-landings would have resembled Eben Emael or Crete is anybody's guess but if they weren't much more like the former than the latter then all Germany's chances would have ended.

An German airhead on British soil would have been a deadly threat to Britain so at that point Fighter Command might have been expected to re-emerge with all the strength it could muster.

Cuisers and destroyers would have roamed the channel at night and, if they failed to cut German supplies, a BB could have been sacrificed on an end-run. Recalling the impact of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau etc. on convoys will illustrate the stupefying violence these machines could bring to bear on undefended merchants.

Five or six divisions would probably have defeated Britain's available field forces but you can't occupy a country the size of Britain with 5 Divisions. This was unfortunate for Hitler because sustaining even this force for a brief period was the absolute limit of Germany's logistical capabilities.

I'm Irish and, as Danes or Dutch or Portugese etc will tell you, there are few things as irritating as coming from a small country with a large neighbour possessing an assured sense of its own grandeur. Odd then, that this story is inverted when talking about the Battle of Britain. The prospect of invasion was one to be interpreted as an opportunity rather than as a risk.

Having talked up Germany's victories all through the summer of '40, Hitler was a victim of the expectations he had generated. If he didn't clinch it that year, however, he'd be left in exactly the same position as Napoleon: facing an adversary with unassailable naval power, a global trading network, ample supplies of everything Germany didn't have (oil, nickel, manganese, tungsten, rubber etc), willing to sustain the conflict literally for as long as necessary and able to do so for the foreseeable future. All exactly as in 1800-1812.

This wouldn't have been enough to secure an Allied victory, but Germany would never have known peace on its frontiers and sooner or later other powers would have joined the fight.

dduff

That's actually a very well thought out and accurate post. Maybe the main consideration in achieving air superiority was the ability to protect or cripple the royal navy (depending on which side one came from). I know for a fact that the reason my county's government chose to side with the allies and suffer 4 years of brutal occupation, resulting in losing 10% of its total polulation to reasons ranging from reprisals to hunger, was that the people in charge simply thought "this is a world war fought over long distances, navies will play a big part and the UK has the best navy of them all'.

Greece was ruled by a dictatorship when Mussolini's ambassador in Athens delivered the ultimatum, asking for free passage and occupation of certain strategic territories. The Greek dictator at the time was closer ideologically to the fascists of Italy and Germany, plus the local royal family was of Danish/German descent and prone to side with the axis. In fact, they tried that in WWI as well, the end result was that pro-allied politicians formed a separate government in the north and nothern Greece was with the allies, while southern Greece was pro-central powers and Athens got occupied by the allied fleet.

The reason both the king and the dictator decided to oppose the axis was two-fold. First of all, the Greek people always root for the underdog and dislike the aggressor, so any attempt to join the axis would have been met by intense resistance from the inside. Second, they were expecting Britain to exhaust their enemies through naval power and blockades, especially since they were suspecting the US would either join the war itself (which it did) or put its industrial power to use in "propping up" Britain when things would get tough through lend-lease.

To make it short i think that even if the luftwaffe had achieved complete air superiority in southern UK, even a suicide run by the royal navy could have wrought terrible losses on the German invasion fleet and either thwart the landings altogether, or diminish numbers so much that ground troops on British soil would be able to hold their ground and achieve a stalemate or more. Maybe 90% of the royal navy units operating in the area would be sunk, but if the RAF had kept some reserves to buy them time and provide air cover they would be able to do substantial damage to the German invasion fleet.
Of course, if the RAF was totally depleted by that point and the warships operated with no cover at all, it would be a totally different story.

Overall, this is a pretty good discussion with lots of opposing, yet well argued points. Well done everybody

[proton45]

I have rather enjoyed "The South Coast Trail"...

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

...
not that many actually, and turns out the Stuka had the lowest loss ratio (as I said it was counter-propaganda against the Stuka's "trumpets of Jericho" kinda fame) :

Luftwaffe losses in the BoB
(source "Kronika Bitvy o Britanii", M. Weidenhofer, Navrat 1991)

Type Losses
Junkers Ju 87 74
Junkers Ju 88 281
Dornier Do 17 171
Dornier Do 215 6
Heinkel He 56 31
Heinkel He 111 246
Heinkel He 115 28
Henschel Hs 126 7
Messerschmitt Bf 109 533
Messerschmitt Bf 110 229
Total 1562

Historians have worked hard in the last years, the numbers I posted above are apparently quite accurate.

Really have to disagree here. The Stukas were withdrawn from the battle on 19th August, so quoting loss rates for the entire period of the battle will give a misleadingly low measure for the Stuka's relative vulnerability.

To get a proper picture we'd need to look at relative percentage of type loss rates for German bomber types over the common period that they were employed.

The fact is though that they were withdrawn by Goering because of unacceptable attrition/loss rates.

(Also, I think you are perhaps a little too quick to define positions that you personally have trouble accepting as 'propaganda'.)

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

as Dutch_851 mentioned above, they had the Me110, helluva underrated machine.

...which had loss rates comparable to the Stuka, but unlike them were maintained in the battle due to Goering's obstinacy, eventually being given 109 escorts!

edit: in the interests of fairness - and having re-read the post that this quote was actually referring to - I would agree that the 110 could perhaps have been used more successfully in the fighter-bomber role rather than persisting as a straight fighter

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

I'm sorry to contradict you again mate, but that's approximate revisionism.

With great respect, you don't seem averse to a spot of this yourself

[kendo65]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

The point is that the German strategy went "headless chicken" at some point, and they dispersed their potential. If things carried on for an extra six months I doubt the results of the battle would have been the same. It would be idiotic to say that the RAF didn't play an important part in the battle, but I would say that the outcome of the battle was more due to the German mistakes than to the RAF struggle.

I don't disagree that the Germans made bad strategic decisons at key points, but the argument was over your statement that the Germans didn't really lose the battle. I was pointing out reasons for concluding that they did. You have now widened the debate to say that (paraphrasing) - "Yes, but they wouldn't have lost if they had done things differently..."

That may well be true. 'What if ' scenarios have their place, but we were discussing what actually happened.

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

U really do overrate Dowding mate..

Disagree.

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

Operation Sea Lion was actually classified as "on hold",

They may have 'classified' it as such, but the fact is that they missed their chance, and subsequent strategic decisions ensured that they wouldn't be in a position to succeed in the future.

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

If you come to think of it, apart for the Jersey Islands nor Germany or Britain lost or gained any significant territory, and the Germans were confident that once they made it to Moscow they could come back and give a massive blow to Britain..

This is another red herring (just like the 'numbers game') for suggesting that the outcome was an honourable draw. I really think that a judgement on who won or lost should be made on which side achieved their overall strategic purpose for the battle (see my previous post).

--- --- ---

Also, to address a previous point:

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger

...
The Germans NEVER complained about shortage of planes and/or pilots in 1940,
...

See this blog posting by James Holland :

"There was also a problem of aircraft shortages – one fighter pilot had to wait three weeks after joining his staffel before there was a Me 109 for him to fly."

http://www.secondworldwarforum.com/2...fe-interviews/