Fordtunate Son

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Military Pron -The Battle of Britain (4aof4) – The Fight

Oct 6, 2021, 1:06 PM

Water is good.

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The English Channel is made of water.

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And it saved England.

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So water is good.

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See?

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We’ve covered the good guys, the bad guys, the strategy, the hardware, the propaganda war and what’s at stake. So lets get those crates airborne and find out exactly what happened in the Battle of Britain, and why.

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Spits on fire! (note the 3-blade and later 4-blade propeller versions)

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Proof the Illuminati were chem-trailing all of England in 1940. Or, simple condensation trails left by German and British planes after a battle. You be the judge.

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The first indications that the Battle of Britain was on was the Germans collecting their invasion barges, and so Winston’s intuition went off like a three-alarm fire.

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And he called it out in the House of Commons on 18 June, 1940, when he said: "What General Weygandt [of France] called the 'Battle of France' is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.” He was right.

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Hit ler looks across the English Channel from Calais, France

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The Battle of Britain didn’t exactly start with a bang, but more of a whimper. It can be roughly subdivided into 4 periods during the Summer and Fall of 1940:

1. Mid June - mid July: The Nuisance Raids
2. Mid July - mid August: The Channel War
3. Mid August – mid September: The Eagle Attack
4. Mid September – mid October: The Blitz

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The Battlefield

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Hurricanes at the ready

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Phase I - The Nuisance Raids
Mid June - mid July

The first German attacks came against British shipping in the English Channel. They did some probing attacks, launched small raids on coastal airfields, went after targets of opportunity, and tested the British air-alert system.

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For a beautifully British live-action account, 2:30-4:00. “That was a bomb.” Lol. “Smash! Oh boy I’ve never seen anything as good as this!”

Click Me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBSjAcANEZY&list=PL3H6z037pboHQz8AfHE1qI_9s4VK55prX&index=4
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The World At War is the definitive documentary on the whole war, narrated by Sir Laurence Oliver. If you only ever watch one documentary on WW2, this is the one you want. Olivier was also the Natzi dentist in Marathon Man. Natzi dentist. That’s fuggin evil.

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Oh no, no no. That tooth nerve is already dead. We’re going to find a live one…

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Sometimes the channel raids at this point in the battle were only one plane, sometimes 5, 10 or 20. Four or five times there was a big raid of 100 or more planes. But generally the time was used to just set off alarms and shake the Brits up a bit.

England is only about as big as SC, and in August alone more than 1000 small raids took place all over the country. That’s like 30 SC cities being buzzed and harrassed every night for a month, with alarms and sirens going off all the time.

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The British Air Raid Siren - in London

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The British Air Raid Siren - in Concert – Up the Irons!

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Phase II - The Channel War
Mid July - mid August

But even a full month into the battle there was still confusion and conflict on both sides of the channel. The Battle Royale in Britain was about to begin, with neither side knowing exactly what they would do, or what they faced.

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On the German side, the commanders of Air Fleet 2 under General Speerle and Air Fleet 3 under General Kesselring could not come to an agreement on the best way to destroy the RAF.

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Goering, overall Luftwaffe Commander and morphine addict (from a WWI injury)

In WWI

In WW2

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Speerle wanted to go for the radar stations and the British air-defense systems first. Then, after blinding the RAF, destroy it piecemeal.
Kesselring wanted to set a trap by bombing London first, drawing the RAF up to defend it, then ambush it in a massive air fight all at once.

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Hugo Sperrle, the piecemeal guy (left), Heinz Guderian, and two other pieces of Nazti trash playing cards before their trials at Nuremberg

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“Smiling Albert” Kesselring, the big smash guy

“Not So Smiling Albert” Kesselring at Nuremberg

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Because they got no clear direction from Goering they kind of did neither, and just muddled around with bigger, and more deadly, but unfocused coastal attacks. This gave the Brits valuable time to build more planes and train more air crews.

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Channel attack of the Pencil Dikks, aka, the horrible Dornier Do-17 Flying Pencils.

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On the British side, the 11 Group Commander defending London wanted to only send up small units to break the German bomber formations up, then kill the stragglers off piecemeal.

The 12 Group Commander defending the Midlands wanted to mass fighters for big strikes and kill the German bombers while they were concentrated.

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“Stuffy” Dowding, Commander-in-Chief, British Air Forces

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11 Group Commander, Keith Park, the piecemeal guy

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12 Group Commander, Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the big smash guy

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So, both the Germans and the Brits squabbled internally with the “piecemeal” vs “all at once” argument.

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By mid July shid started getting real. Bombing of channel ports and air fields increased significantly, and convoy losses became so high that the Brits went to only nighttime shipping. Eventually, it got so bad that there was no channel shipping at all, and railroads had to do the job.

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British dock and convoy casualties

The backup plan

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On the other side, the Germans took such severe Ju-87 stuka losses to Hurricanes and Spitfires they pulled them from the battle completely. The venerable old dive bomber became a flying coffin up against modern fighters.

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Last hurrah of the Ju-87 in Britain. It would come back later as a tank killer in Russia with (2) whopper 37mm can-opening cannons instead of bombs. A poor man’s A-10 Warthog.

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I’m not dead yet…

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If you’ll remember, at the start of the battle the Brits had about 900 fighters and 1000 bombers, and the Luftwaffe had about 1200 fighters and 1300 bombers. So a slight advantage in machines to the Luftwaffe. But there was much more to the battle than machines.

Losses during this time were roughly 5-10 German aircraft every day, and about half that for the Brits. One of the more remarkable statistics of the BOB is that this ratio continued throughout the whole 120 day fight. Some days it was 10:5, some days 20:10, some days 2:1, and occasionally the Brits would lose more than the Germans, but by and large aircraft losses were eerily between 1.5:1 and 2:1, in the British favor, the whole time.

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RAF pilots with their inflated cushion “Mae West” life jackets

Mae West with her own inflated cushions

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Phase III - The Eagle Attack
Mid August – mid September

Bouyed by their successes over the channel against British shipping and airfields, the Germans finally got their shid together decided to launch the coup de grace on August 15 to start the third phase of the fight.

Alder Tag, or “Eagle Day”, would be the knock out punch against the RAF. The Germans though that with one massive, concentrated blow they could annihilate the British Air Force in a single day, and use the next 3 days to mop up the remnants. Complete victory in 4 short days. They were wrong.

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A sorry axx Do-17 going down right into Victoria station, the main railway terminus in London

And the result on the ground

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First, the Germans spent a week attacking radar stations to blind the British. Then they dropped the hammer.

Eagle Day was a massive assault by virtually all of the 2nd, 3rd , and 5th Air Fleets. All 8 major airfields of 11 Group and 6 major airfields of 12 Group were to be simultaneously bombed into oblivion. In all, twenty four hours of constant attacks against 14 major airfields and two dozen smaller ones.

When the RAF fighters came up to attack the bombers, they would be ambushed by German fighters and annihilated.

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British and German Air Base Locations

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But both sides were groping in the dark. Colossal intelligence failures on each side played a huge part in the battle. Consistently, the British thought the Luftwaffe was stronger than it was, and the Germans thought the RAF was weaker than it was. And these fallacies changed the nature of the fight.

And that’s where we’ll resume, with the dramatic conclusion!

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There goes the siren that warns of the air raid
Then comes the sound of the guns sending flak
Out for the scramble we've got to get airborne
Got to get up for the coming attack.
Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines
Remove all the wheelblocks theres no time to waste
Gathering speed as we head down the runway
Gotta get airborne before it's too late

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again
Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Won't you run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high.

Move in to fire at the mainstream of bombers
Let off a sharp burst and then turn away
Roll over, spin round to come in behind them
Move to their blindsides and firing again
Bandits at 8 o'clock move in behind us
Ten ME-109's out of the sun
Ascending and turning our spitfires to face them
Heading straight for them I press down my guns.

Rolling, turning, diving
Rolling, turning, diving (doing it again)
Rolling, turning, diving
Rolling, turning, diving
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Won't you run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high

Military Pron -The Battle of Britain (4aof4) – The Fight

Thanks Fordt ! And don't let the little man drown.

Re: Military Pron -The Battle of Britain (4aof4) – The Fight

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