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Military Pron - The Battle of Britain (4bof4) - Victory

Oct 7, 2021, 5:29 PM

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Military Pron -The Battle of Britain (4bof4) – Victory

Last time, we left the battle during the ramp up to Eagle Day. Germany was prepping for a one-day knockout blow after suppressing British radar installations. Wave after wave of bombers and fighters soared over England all week, with the fate of the nation in the balance.

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Bombs Away!

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Pilots were pushed to the limits of their endurance, going up two, three, or even four times in a day. But soon enough failures in the Luftwaffe planning began to show. They were so confident that the RAF would be defending only the south and London that they launched unescorted bomber attacks in the north. That was a deadly mistake.

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Ju-88’s. The jacks of all trades

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In the south, further intelligence failures began to weaken their relentless assault from the air. Mistakes were being made on both sides, but the Germans were making more.

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How to win when outnumbered 12 to 1. Easy peasy, mate.

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The Luftwaffe mistakenly bombed radar stations that weren’t even functional yet, and some bases that were unfinished or that belonged to Bomber and Coastal Commands. These mistaken attacks were a completely wasted effort and had no effect whatsoever on Fighter Command’s capabilities in the critical days to follow.

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Derp He-111’s headed off to bomb Coastal Command. Hey guys, you’re missing the fight.

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So the preparatory attacks to Eagle Day became yet another bloody nose for the Germans. They had already been abused in the first two phases, the Nuisance Raids and the Channel Fight, and this third phase of the battle was starting out just as poorly for them. So they doubled down on failure. Losses by day: German - British

Sunday, August 11: 38-32 planes
Monday, August 12: 31-32 planes
Tuesday, August 13: 45-13 planes
Wednesday, August 14: 18-8 planes

For a 4 day total of – 132-85, or 1.5:1

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Good trouble to the rescue…

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Conventional wisdom is that there was a machine problem in the battle; a shortage of planes. As it turned out, the more acute problem was finding pilots. Neither side’s aircraft production was significantly impacted in the fight, so planes shot down just kept being replaced. But keeping pilots trained, awake, alive, uninjured, and flying was a problem for both sides.

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Aces High!

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Surprisingly, the Brits had no organized recovery system for downed pilots. The thought was that over land a pilot could simply make his way back to his base by whatever means, and over sea he would be picked up by any passing boat. What???

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For you, the war is over.

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The Germans actually had dedicated rescue seaplanes, but in war there is no place for nobility, chivalry, or rules. Churchill ordered that hospital seaplanes be priority targets.

“We did not recognise this means of rescuing enemy pilots so they could come and bomb our civil population again... all German air ambulances were forced down or shot down by our fighters on definite orders approved by the War Cabinet.” War is war it seems.

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He-59 sea rescue plane. You don’t really want to be in a biplane if a spitfire finds you.

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August 15 is known as “The Greatest Day” by the British and “Black Thursday” by the Germans. The German knock-out blow involved more than 2000 sorties. That is a shidton of flights. The attack on Pearl Harbor was 350 planes, so Eagle Day was about the size of 6 Pearl Harbors. The firebombing of Tokyo was 500 B-29’s, so 4 times as big as that. Even the biggest bombing runs in the war, three 1,000 bomber raids by the British in 1942, were still only half the size of Eagle Day.

Even in the monstrous invasion of Russia, the Germans flew just over 2,000 sorties along a front as long as the entire Eastern Seaboard on the first day. On Eagle Day they used that same amount of force on an area half the size of S.C. like I said, a shidton of flights.

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But when the sun set the Germans still were no better off proportionally than they were when they started. The British held the line, so to speak. Due to poor information and poor tactics Eagle day was a massive failure in all its aims. On that single day the loss ratio was 75:34. The next day it was 45:22. Two days later it was 71:27. Eagle day was a colossal bust, as were the immediate follow up attacks.

Because of radar, the Dowding system, and German incompetence, the RAF was always in the right place at the right time, just barely, and in strength.

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Me 110’s on the prowl

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That put the weekly total for the third week of August, 1940 at 327 German planes lost and 158 British planes lost, or, 2:1. Those losses were unsustainable by either side so the Germans backed off. Losses were so bad in the 5th Air Fleet based in Norway that it was taken completely out of the battle.

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Need to know the score on whether you will be slave or free? Check your daily paper.

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A downed Do-17 Pencil Dikk

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The Germans licked their wounds, regrouped, and tried again with different tactics.

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This time Goering called off attacks on radar installations. He ordered his fighters to stop chasing the RAF and focus fully on protecting their own bombers from the Hurricanes and Spitfires. The new priority was bombing airfields.

All 14 major Brit airbases in 11 and 12 Groups were hit between 2 and 4 times each in the next few days, along with many others. One base was hit 7 times, but it was a Coastal Command base, so Natzi submariners even got a boon from the battle. Snort.

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Sailors of the Kriegsmarine salute the Luftwaffe for bombing the wrong bases. Ha ha ha ha.

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Biff old chap, have any idea what those odd towers do? I’ll ask back at the club. Maybe they’re with the cricket team.

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The battle went on, and valuable lessons were learned by both sides on an almost daily basis. New tactics were developed and old ones tossed out.

The Germans mocked the British pilots for being “idiots on a rope”, because British doctrine held that groups of 4 planes had to stick together at all times for protection, while the Germans were allowed to pair off in 2’s and use much looser combat formations as the situation required.

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A nasty, nasty find for unsuspecting Natzis

That extra fuel tank under the belly might mean the difference between home and a swim.

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The British learned that their Hurricanes were best suited to take on enemy bombers, while the Spitfires took on the 109 and 110 escorts. They also learned that both had a wider turning circle than they did – a critical disadvantage in combat.

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The nuances
of life and death

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The Germans learned that their fuel injected 109’s and 110’s had a distinct edge in a dive, where G forces would choke out the carburetors in the Spitfires and Hurricanes. And any advantage in such a close run thing could mean the difference between life and death.

“...the differences between the Spitfire and the Me 109 in performance and handling were only marginal, and in a combat they were almost always surmounted by tactical considerations of which side had seen the other first, which had the advantage of sun, altitude, numbers, pilot ability, tactical situation, tactical co-ordination, amount of fuel remaining, etc.”

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Different planes, but same tactics

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But despite their combat and mission changes, the Luftwaffe fared little better in the second half of the Eagle Attack than they did in the first. Losses remained heavy, though more spread out, and the RAF seemed as strong as ever despite massive damage to their airbases and mounting losses in the sky.

The numbers for the back half of August and first half of September were 546:409 for 1.5:1. What the Germans didn’t realize was the Brits were producing more fighters per month than they were losing. So they actually WERE getting stronger.

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Hey Ladies! Hey ladies in the place, I'm callin' out to ya, there never was a city kid truer and bluer...

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But the real problem for both sides continued to be pilots. Anyone shot down over England stayed in England. The Germans developed a real fatigue condition called “Channel Sickness.” Thirty minute flights back and forth over the channel, day after day for months, induced actual physical illness.

And the range of the 109 only allowed for a 10 minute fight before having to head back to France or Belgium. At this point in the battle the German pilot shortage was as up to one-third of their available planes. If Fighter Command were 'the few', the German fighter pilots were the fewer. The British deficiency hovered around 10%.

Though they started with more, as the battle wore on it was the Germans who were running more short of planes and pilots. Moreso than the British, who were actually getting stronger.

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Jerry kickin’ back during a break

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And then, with Britain under extreme pressure from the German airfield bombing campaign, fate intervened. Bomber Command was making regular runs into Germany every few nights. One of their missions lost its way and bombed a civilian part of Berlin by accident. Hit ler, who had deliberately not bombed British civilian areas up to this point, was incensed and accused Churchill of deliberate savagery. Lol. Hit ler on a high horse.

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The Noble Natzis. Barf.

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So Hit ler removed his restriction on civilian targets, and Kesselring, who wanted to go for London from the start, got in Goering’s ear. With Britain on the ropes, the priority was changed again, from radar, then to airfields, and now to to indiscriminate city bombing. Hit ler wanted to break British morale and punish Churchill for Berlin civilian deaths. The British called this 4th phase of the battle the Blitz. This was the 1940 Blitz. There was another Blitz in 1944 when the Germans developed the V-1 and V-2 (vengerance) rocket bombs.

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The start of America’s space program. We got the scientists in Operation Paperclip and the Russians got the hardware.

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The father of NASA, the ex-natzi Wernher Von Braun. From terror bombing Britain to the moon in 25 short years.

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It’s Bugs Bunny again with Goering!

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He-111 over London in the 1940 Blitz

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The Germans started the Blitz with around the clock raids, but quickly went to nighttime raids due to the lack of fighter pilots to defend the bombers. And why not? Their orders now were simple. Find the shining city of London in the dark, and bomb the he77 out of it. Easy enough.

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London’s burning…

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But despite all the incredible carnage, nothing was achieved but burnt-out buildings and increased British determination to resist. Fighter Command was saved at the cost of British civilian lives, and the plane loss ratio remained consistent. For this last month of the Battle, losses were 436:242, or 1.8:1.

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Stay calm and carry on, and try to squeeze in a good book between bombings

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Finally, in mid October, Hit ler had enough. He postponed Sea Lion and the deception plan to invade eastern England from Norway, Operation Herbstreisse (Autumn Journey). Both were suspended till next spring. Hit ler had bigger fish to fry than little old England.

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The main event of all WW2

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The Battle of Britain was over, and was an embarrassing and undeniable defeat for Hit ler. But there are some alternate viewpoints, and there’s a camp that thinks Hit ler never even intended to invade England at all. He did make preparations, and there was a he77 of a fight, but the argument is that the whole event was a ruse.

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The idea is that if Hit ler applied enough pressure politically and/or militarily, that the Brits, fractured by sympathizers, would buckle and negotiate peace. But Winston wasn’t going to let that happen.

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The resolute bulldog

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Additional ammo for that argument is that the German army was not built for amphibious invasions. They simply had no training, and the fact that they confiscated barges from all over France showed they had no amphibious building program prior to their victory in France.

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As I said earlier, even we had problems supplying the Normandy invasion in 1944. There was virtually no way Germany could have sustained a cross-channel offensive for any length of time in 1940, particularly with winter coming. The channel was simply an insurmountable obstacle for an unprepared army. Water good.

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Heinkel He-111’s make their way over a choppy channel. Who wants to cross that in a barge?

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In fact, the British military conducted a war game in 1974 to see if Sea Lion could have been successful. In their model, the Germans could have suppressed the RAF long enough to invade if they had stayed on the airfield campaign, and could have landed in southern England.

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But the weather, the Royal Navy, the resurgence of the RAF in northern England, and their own lack of logistical capability would have stopped any reinforcing troops, and in time, those Germans that did land in the initial invasion would have been defeated.

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England’s ace in the hole. Rule Britannia!

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In Britain, Churchill even described "the great invasion scare" as "serving a very useful purpose" by "keeping every man and woman tuned to a high pitch of readiness". On 10 July he advised the War Cabinet that invasion could be ignored, as it "would be a most hazardous and suicidal operation".

Another untold story is how effective Bomber Command’s attacks on the barges were. Hundreds were sunk still tied to the docks. It’s hard
to invade an island without boats.

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Invasion Barges in France, still floating at this point

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And, Hitler always had ambitions in the east, ie, Russia. His entire adult life was consumed with the obsession of conquering Russia for Germany’s expansion. Britain was not necessarily an enemy to him, simply a means to an end...by negotiation, by alliance, or by subjugation. Russia was the end goal.

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So my opinion is that he simply rolled the dice to see what happened. If Britain rolled over, great. If Britain made a mistake or left the door open, great. But once it was clear Britain would not fold and could not be knocked out quickly, he returned to plan A: Russia.

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Besides, he planned on defeating Russian in only 6 months, during the Fall and Winter of 1941. By the time 1942 arrived, he would have plenty of time to deal with Britain. Sure America was shipping Britain goods under the table, but so what?

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In 1940 there was absolutely no chance isolationist America was going to war. And what on earth could ever happen to change that before Russia was defeated in November or December of 1941? Hit ler had all the time in the world to resume the attack on England after Russia was defeated. So he tested the waters with Britain and then moved on.

Which leaves us at this point. The Battle of Britain was as much about getting America into the war as it was about saving Britain. Hit ler was looking for a quick, easy, kill or negotiation, and Churchill was looking for a propaganda victory to jump start America’s isolationism.

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Propganda so simple even USuCk fans could understand it.

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Britain was saved, but as it turned out, neither man got all they wanted. Hit ler would never conquer Britain, and Churchill would have to wait for someone else to bring America into the war. And a little over a year after the Battle of Britain was over, the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor.

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Yeah, I'm with Moo on this one. I've got a series of posts on the Russian war planned for the future. Depending on the level of detail those could go on forever, so fighting to summarize is the real battle lol.

I mean really, it WAS the war. I think I posted somewhere that I was on a forum reading posts and one guy asked about the war in the east and some other guy responded "Was there anything else?" It was the cause of the war (in Europe at least), the end of the war, and our involvement was even tied to it, as odd as that might seem.

People forget that America was (and is, in magnitude), another Europe. They have 44 states, we have 50. We have a little more land, they have a few more people. But when Churchill wanted "America" to enter the war, we weren't just a country, we were the equivalent of a second Europe joining the fight. That's not quite like say Denmark or Norway joining the cause. We had 1/3 of the world's resource production, Europe had a third, and the rest of the world had a third.

As to Stalingrad specifically, it was a he77 of a fight, but not what you see in the city itself in documentaries. The REAL fight was the campaign outside of the city, which was as big as a US state. The city was just the cheese for the trap. That'll be a really fun post. He77 of a story.

Had Case Blue (the occupation of Southern Russia) succeeded, that would have given Hit ler the oil he wanted, but not the production, as Moo said. America and Russian were just two giant steamrollers headed to Berlin from different sides, and no amount of extra oil was gonna stop that.

What is not well known is just how demolished the Wehrmacht was after the Battle of Moscow. Hit ler went balls to the wall and failed, and BOTH armies were just annihilated. The reason he only went south in 1942 was because that's all he could do. His army was not yet fully rebuilt from the losses in 1941. It'll be a great, great, riveting tale.

Military Pron - The Battle of Britain (4bof4) - Victory

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My biggest weakness, like Kryptonite. Eyes***

Re: My biggest weakness, like Kryptonite. Eyes***

Which one of those fuzzy sweater babes is KMS

Re: Which one of those fuzzy sweater babes is KMS

KMS16312 profile pic used to be a fuzzy haltertop with nice

Crass had it so good.***

Another masterpiece! Bravo!

Outstanding. I've been accused of being "obsessed with WW2"

Re: Outstanding. I've been accused of being "obsessed with WW2"

You'll appreciate this... my (ex) wife was buying old hardback books

Re: Outstanding. I've been accused of being "obsessed with WW2"

Re: Military Pron - The Battle of Britain (4bof4) - Victory

Re: Military Pron - The Battle of Britain (4bof4) - Victory

Awesome pic of what happened on the gateway to Stalingrad.

Yeah, ultimately. But it would have taken a heck of a lot

Re: Awesome pic of what happened on the gateway to Stalingrad.

I've posted this before, but I'll repeat myself. When I was

Re: I've posted this before, but I'll repeat myself. When I was

Re: Military Pron - The Battle of Britain (4bof4) - Victory

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