Not so few against not that many? Battle of Britain question...

[killmore]

I have a book by Bryan Philpott "History of german airforce".

This book claims that numbers were equal between Luftwaffe and RAF.

Book claims it was not 500:2000 but rather 1:1. Author claims that most books simply compare all Luftwaffe forces agains british figter command forces.

Book says that RAF had 670 servicable fighters with 513 in reserve. German forces assigned to attack UK were 640 servicable ME-109 and 190 servicable ME110 (which proved useless). This would make forces almost equal...

Do these numbers hold water?

[109 Gustav]

Can't help you here, but you might have better luck posting on the air combat games forum.

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number=4&SUBMIT=Go

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[Guest Michael emrys]

Couldn't quote actual numbers off the top of my head, but yours sound quite plausible. But what you must remember is the BoB was not a fighter against fighter dogfight. There were hundreds of German bombers that had to be stopped if the battle was to be won. So the RAF was fighting two battles, the first against the escorting German fighters to get to the bombers, and then against the bombers themselves.

Michael

[Jagdwyrm]

How many of those RAF fighters were Defiants? I would consider them more useless than an Me-110.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by Jagdwyrm:

How many of those RAF fighters were Defiants?

Only a squadron or two.

I would consider them more useless than an Me-110.

So would I. And so would the RAF, since the surviving examples were quickly withdrawn from frontline service and relegated to target towing duties. Whereas, the Bf 110 had a long and distinguished career in many roles.

Michael

[Tanks a Lot]

Both air forces were about the same size. Obviously the R.A.F. wouldn't send their bombers up to intercept the Luftwaffe, so the attacking force would always be larger.

The JU87 Stukas were pretty useless during the battle to.

[JunoReactor]

I think I read in Lidell Hart's book on WWII that the fighter numbers were the same too.

How many Spits did the Brits have?

If am not mistaken, the bulk of their forces were Hurricanes.

[Soddball]

The numbers are deceptive. Some of those classified as fighter command squadrons were training units, others were elderly, outdated or just plain crappy planes. There were a few squadrons of spitfires, but mostly hurricanes in 1939/40 IIRC. Furthermore, you don't say whether Fighter Command was including its air assets overseas in those numbers - does that include the squadrons in the middle east, Africa and South Asia? If so, that's even fewer planes to defend the UK.

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[darsalon]

Originally posted by JunoReactor:

I think I read in Lidell Hart's book on WWII that the fighter numbers were the same too.

Also another factor was that German aircraft production was being scaled down during 1940. Whilst the British were able to make up their losses in aircraft pretty well (also done by cannabalising scrapped planes) the Germans were starting to suffer shortages of planes because of their low production.

As it was correctly put the Germans were having to do escort duties which constricted what they could and couldn't do. Also, big question here, why the hell didn't they put fuel tanks on the 109s to enable them to fight longer over Britain? Was used by them in the Spanish Civil war so it would have been reasonable common sense to use them whilst they were forming up in France and flying over the channel.

[Mattias]

Rowan's Battle of Britain claims...

RAF:

286 Spitfire

463 Hurricane

37 Defiants

114 Blenheims

900 Total

Luftwaffe:

844 Me 109s

250 Me 110s

280 Ju 87s

1330 Do 17, Ju 88, He 111s

80 Long Range Recce

2784 Total

M.

[Guest Germanboy]

Okay, comparing just fighter numbers, the Luftwaffe had a slight advantage. As always, numbers are deceptive however. The RAF had to cover the whole of Britain, while the Luftwaffe could concentrate on the south. Also, the C&C elements and the airfields of the RAF were under direct attack, thus forcing withdrawal of squadrons from the south-east, partly negating the fuel advantage. IIRC, the mood amongst the RAF brass when the Luftwaffe switched to blitzing London was relief, because they were on their last leg. The attacks on the airfields had hit home. The RAF also faced a pilot crisis - no good having the planes if you have nobody fly them.

So while the stats seem to point out that the Luftwaffe superiority was not that high, if you look at the circumstances the RAF was in deep trouble.

Defiants and Blenheims were useless as fighters BTW.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Londoner]

As already touched on, the Germans could concentrate, almost always giving them the a local numerical advantage. A raid of say 200 bombers with a similar size escort could rarely be intercepted with the same strength. True most of fighter commands bases were concetrated in the south east but they were still dipersed. Not every RAF fighter was in a state of immediate readiness all day, rest, repairs and CAPs eat into the number of aircraft available. and it took time to assemble, organise and vector large numbers of fighters in the air. After this you have to remember that half the interception force was probably detailed to attack the bombers.

Also the aim of the game was speed, the bombers had to be intercepted before they reached their target. Typically there just wasn't time to organise an interception force of the same size. So yes, i reckon it was a notable acheivement, normally against nasty odds, by "the few". Numbers alone dont tell the whole story...

(Germanboy, didn't u say u were in London? Fancy a TCP game considering the timezone?)

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In military operations timing is everything.

Wellington

1800.

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[Londoner]

Darsalon, if memory serves me correct, drop tanks were fitted to 109s. They were however made of wood, and proved very vulnerable to enemy fire, i think for this reason they were withdrawn. I'm no techical expert but I'd imagine the Spainsh civil war didn't fully test their combat durability, for obvious reasons. Could be wrong though.....

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In military operations timing is everything.

Wellington

1800.

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[Guest Mike the bike]

FWIW many eyars ago I did a paper on the BoB & found some nteresting stuff. I can't ermember all fo it, but:

1/ the British thought they were getting in trouble when they had 1.5 pilots per a/c - the luftwaffe NEVER had more than 1.1 pilots per me-109!

2/ at one stage in September the Luftwaffe had only 283 serviceable Me-109's

3/ British fighter production was over twice that of german fighter production (all types incl Defiants & Me-110's) because the Germans had not gone to a war footing.

4/ the Luftwaffe managed to put only 1 major airfield out of action comletely during the whole "battle", and that was for only 1 day!

Basicaly I concluded that given the circumstances of the times there was no way the Germans could have defeated figther command, and they never came close to doing so.

Of course the Brits & Germans didn't know that at the time tho'!

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

I think the Brits were right to worry about the pilots. The Brits did have good fighter production, and the result of it was that there force was maintaining size through the battle. Some ups and down, certainly. The German force was not, it was declining. That appeared an episodic thing to the Brits, because more of the German air force, percentage wise, was committed later on than on "Eagle Day" (start of large scale raids).

But there is an effect of high loss rates being made good by a superior production rate. The pilot experience level was going down. Yes, the Germans had fewer pilots per plane, perhaps, but that didn't mean much because their force wasn't manning a surge of new plane production filling the gaps. The Germans had fewer escorts later on, not worse pilots for them.

Incidentally, the losses to the German bombers were not trivial. Unlike the late war fight over Germany, fighter armament was comparatively primitive in 1940. The Brit fighters had 8x.303 cal MG each, firing essentially rifle bullets. And because of that, to take down the German bombers they usually needed to sit on their tail. That is where bombers can shoot back effectively.

See, later on, the bombers over Germany were heavily enough defending that tail attacks were extremely dangerous for the fighter, and they were generally avoided because of it. They instead attacked from the front, or high angles from the side, with monster closing speeds and crossing angle rates. This was designed to maximize the advantage of a small fast target vs. a large on that wasn't maneuvering much. Plain enough. But for that to work, brief bursts of fire had to be able to seriously hurt the target. That meant cannons - 20mm and 30mm AA cannons. The British fighters didn't have cannons until after the Battle of Britain, when later model Hurcs and Spits were out.

A long story with a short moral. The Brit fighters had to make their firing passes from behind because of their light armament, and that meant the bombers could shoot back reasonably well. The race was whether the Germans would run out of planes, or the greener British replacement flyers would lose the air combat skills needed to keep winning.

Needless to say the Germans lost that race. In part because the were being outproduced, in part because even the green British pilots proved pretty tough in practice.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by darsalon:

Also, big question here, why the hell didn't they put fuel tanks on the 109s to enable them to fight longer over Britain? Was used by them in the Spanish Civil war so it would have been reasonable common sense to use them whilst they were forming up in France and flying over the channel.

They did. Trouble is that the tanks available at that time were small and didn't extend their range all that much.

Michael

[Guest machineman]

There was a show on a while ago that put the view out that what really made the difference for the British was the new employment of radar to track incoming aircraft. With it they could sort out where the attacks were coming and mass their fighters to meet them. Without it the interceptions that won the battle simply could not have been made.

From what I remember the Germans could not figure out how these interceptions were done as it had simply not been possible before, and they never did completely clue in before the battle was lost.

[Soddball]

The Germans IIRC did work out that radar was allowing interceptions and made a number of attempts to disable the radar stations - on the days that radar was out of action (either through bombing or mechanical failure), the Luftwaffe did a great deal of damage.

The point about the pilots is interesting - what hasn't been raised though is that during the BoB pilots would fly 8-12 hours a day, sometimes more, and could easily become burned out - if they survived long enough. Exhaustion was often a problem for squadrons desperate to keep planes in the air.

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"Woof!Woof!"

That's my other dog impression.

[Bry Barnard]

Check out this web site for some really good info on the Battle of Britain...

http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/bobhome.html

[Gaspard]

Hi Kilmore,

As several people have already pointed out, the Battle of Britain was not just about the number of aircraft available, as in all things in life there were many other complicating factors.

The greatest problem for Britain was trained pilots. There were generally more than enough aircraft available, but these in themselves are useless if you have no one to fly them! Each pre-war or reserve pilot loss was a crippling blow to Fighter Command as replacement pilots tended to be rushed through their training and were consequently easier prey to the Luftwaffe. Same problem as in the Great War.

Also, the British Fighter Squadrons were scattered all over the country. There were 4 groups across Britain: 13 Group in the north, 12 Group in the midlands, 10 Group in the south-west and 11 Group in the south-east. Obviously 11 Group bore the brunt of the fighting and individual squadrons were transferred between the groups for rest and re-fit. On the 15th of September 11 Group had 7 Spitfire squadrons, 14 Hurricane squadrons (12 aircraft per squadron nominally) and 6 "others" which was between 1/4 to 1/3 roughly of the available fighter squadrons. During the time of the "monster" raids squadrons from the neighbouring groups would be scrambled to assist, but it is clear from what other have said that whatever happened the Luftwaffe always had the upper hand and were able to bring an overwhelming force at a point and time of their choosing.

There are certainly many recorded instances of a half-squadron of Hurricanes (that's 6 aircraft) going in to attack bombers escorted by ten times the number of German fighters - bearing in mind that Hurricanes were generally ordered to attack the bombers while the Spits dealt with the escorting fighters as they were outclassed by the ME109s. Some of the odds they faced stagger belief!

Anyway, there are a lot of books which discuss this in much more detail than I can go into here. I guess my point is that, like so much in war, there are no simple answers. Ceratinly there were political undertones during the battle, and Dowding who headed Fighter Command during the battle was replaced soon after. Numbers never tell the true story...

Regards,

Gaspard.

Ps I read in a post that the Luftwaffe were supposedly never close to winning. I would disagree with this conclusion. Certainly during the raids on 11 Group's airfields there was a short time during the battle when many of their airfields became almost unusable. It was only the switch to from this policy by the Luftwaffe upper command (read probably Goering) which gave them the respite to repair them. Without the advanced airfields in the south-east things may have turned out differently. But that's what-if's for you!

[Guest Rex_Bellator]

Aaaah statistics, my favourite excuse for leaving the room. All I'd like to add to this thread is that I suspect that any of the pilots regularly flying their half dozen planes into hundreds of enemy aircraft would never have doubted that they were indeed 'the Few'. IMHO numbers never tell a story, people do. Thanks to the other posters for concentrating on the numerical arguments!

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In blossom today

then scattered,

life is so like a delicate flower,

how can one expect the fragrance

to last forever

Vice Admiral Takijiro Ohnishi - Commander Kamikaze Special Attack Force

[This message has been edited by Rex_Bellator (edited 03-21-2001).]