Battle of Britain

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#21

Although I agree with much of what youve written there is a clear diffrence between Allied losses, say in 1944 and German losses in 1940.

In some of the links I posted its very clear that the Germans couldnt afford the loss rate while the RAF could. The problem for the RAF was pilots and it was a good thing they were fighting over friendly skies.

Its not just about men and machines though as the BoB was won as much by British technical innovation as by them. Radar played a part, but so did the Observer Corps, this enabled the limited fighter resources to be employed at just the right time and place. The introduction of the sector stations to filter the information and give the commanders a much more accurrate picture of events than any german commander received was another bonus. Something the Germans did themselves later in the war.

The Germans also did themselves no favours by continually changing their goalposts.

#22

Possibly not quite as far from the truth as you think. While the Luftwaffe was clearly still dangerous, it lost two very important things in the BoB:

  1. It’s mystique - prior to the BoB, it was undefeated and people still believed that air power could crush whole countries by itself in a short period of time, that “the bomber will always get through”. The BoB disproved this, and massively lessened the psychological power of the Luftwaffe.
  2. A large fraction of their prewar trained pilot strength - wartime training was never as good. This applied also to the RAF, but through the Empire air training schemes (notably in Canada) they were much better able to replace their losses than the Germans were once they got ramped up.

I’d say there was certainly a good case to suggest that the Luftwaffe was never the same again after the BoB, and never as dangerous.

#23

A good example of this is the Bomber Commander of the Luftwaffe. He wasnt the Pilot but was ahighly trained specialist in many disciplines, including a Pilot qualification. It took a long time for this training and after the BoB, was never the same. The Germans could never afford the time to train them the same way and lost an effective command tool there.

#24

Well :oops: sorry to cause any discord…

#25

No discord mate. A nice healthy debate is what we like here. After all it would be a poor forum if we all agreed all the time. Keep your input coming mate I for one appreciate your posts.