Germany did not lose the Battle of Britain

[kimosabi]

Not by the RAF? C'mon. Who honestly believes that the RAF and its tactical situation had nothing to do with defeating the LW?

The LW had its own struggles, that's for sure, by fall 1940 they suffered from lack of resources, lack of experienced pilots and got down-prioritized on the western front. Most pilots during the start of the BoB had atleast 3 years experience. Majority of the resources went east for the Soviet campaign. They were on serious fuel shortage, U.Steinhilper mentioned in his book that they were cut down on fuel and the hourly engine warm ups was stopped because of that shortage and so on. They even started mixing small amounts of fuel in the engine oil to get the performance from the engines needed for a scramble from cold starts. Figured that should save them some drops.

Couple more things about the LW and its tactics. The schwarm formation was good and all but the setup of that schwarm was highly ineffective for the guys not leading it. They used "katschmareks" at the back, which only role was to protect the wing leaders/higher rank and usually they were the most inexperienced pilots. The high scorers like Galland was always under protection from a "katschmarek", usually never the other way around. It was never a collaboration and that cost them dearly. Many claims that those tactics were in fact reducing their pilot stock from the "recruitment side" which explains why they were in such shortage of pilots early on.

Secondly, widespread use of "Freie Jagd" basically served as intel for the RAF and RAF usually routed their wings away from those so that they could focus on bomber formations. LW tipped off the RAF too much by doing that and the LW probably severely underestimated RAFs radar, comms and control systems. LW didn't know how much RAF knew IMO.

And lastly, tactical situation. There were one time where RAF was under heavy pressure and that was up to the end of the airfield raids and bombings. Suddenly the Germans focused on bombing London and cities which resulted in some extra breathing space for the RAF. Besides the fact that UK had more resources, huge tactical advantage, higher production and better recruitment, I guess the LW had a chance. But not with the antique attitudes they struggled with from a less mature air warfare that many pilots from the Legion Condor enforced.