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

[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?

[Wutz]

Originally Posted by ACE-OF-ACES

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

AXIS 0
ALLIEDS 1

Nuff said?

On that bases you can say
Britons 0
Romans 1

Or
Normal people 0
Hooligans and looters 1

any more wacky comparisons?

[bongodriver]

Originally Posted by Wutz

On that bases you can say
Britons 0
Romans 1

Or
Normal people 0
Hooligans and looters 1

any more wacky comparisons?

Whacky?.......OMG you really are in complete denial.

how can a country that ended up split in two and occupied by 4 different nations for decades not consider itself defeated?

[DrDom]

I'm all outta popcorn

[winny]

Surley success can only be measured against objective?

The German objective was air supremacy over southern England, the British objective was to stop that. So that's a victory for that particular phase.

Problem with the Battle of Britain is that at the time nobody really knew it had finished, it just sort of changed into the Blitz period.

Back to the OT, I think a lot of the LW people were disillusioned with German High Command ofter the BoB. In the same way that the RAF became disillusioned with the fighter sweeps and bomber escorts of the later years.

As for the score... Wasn't it 2-0? (tounge is firmly in cheek!)

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by winny

Problem with the Battle of Britain is that at the time nobody really knew it had finished, it just sort of changed into the Blitz period.

Bingo.

It was Winston Churchill that spoke first on the radio about "the Battle of Britain", and it became the propaganda name for it, but de facto the air operations of Germany against Great Britain were just a part of the invasion plan, and the bombing of England continued up to 1945 with V1s and V2s.

The glory of the Battle of Britain is a modern phenomenon (you probably know better than me that up until the movie Battle of Britain the public opinion knew or cared little about it. So the idea was to pick up on a moment of national pride and dust it off, but it has been misinterpreted. Surely the brave RAF pilots and everyone involved deserve all the praise in the world for the fantastic effort made to stop the Germans, but the effort to repel the air offensive of 1940 doesn't mean there was a straight victory.

The propaganda was in need of a positive message, so they started claiming the victory of a battle that was perceived as such only from one side.

I dunno if I made myself clear, I reckon I should gather my thoughts and expose them in a more organic form. I am still afraid that national bias is getting in the way here. Nobody is depriving you of your pride or anything like that, it's just a case of a fair assessment of a specific part of the war.

[NedLynch]

Originally Posted by DrDom

I'm all outta popcorn

That is the most reasonable post here. I feel your pain man.

Soooo, how about donuts then?