Battle of Britain (Part 1)

The thread of Independent Air Forces (pro and con) went off on a tangent discussing the Battle of Britain, so I thought to focus the topic here (though I may yet contribute to the earlier thread).

One problem with writing about the event is that so much mythology has developed around it that any attempt to set the record straight is bound to offend somebody and lead to charges of "revisionism".

The official dates - 10 July to 31 October 1940 - were chosen half way through the war and then for the purposes of defining eligibility for the "Battle of Britain" clasp to the 1939-45 Star (which has originally been created as the 1939-43 Star). The dates were purely abrbitrary, and a look at the records shows very little difference between the level of fighting on 9 July as opposed to 10 July or 1 November as opposed to 31 October. So the dates are artificial (but this happens a lot - when exactly did the Second World War end ?)

The 10 July date turns out to be insignificant. Hitler expected the British to sue for terms (which every piece of logic dicated that they should - logic and morality do not always coincide) - so he dithered and paraded for weeks after the French capitulation. When the British bombarded the French fleet at Oran on 3 July 1940 (and demonstrated an unexpected degree of ruthlessness) he began to have second thoughts - but the Fuehrer Directive that initiated SEA LION was not issued until 20 July 1940 and it was ambiguous, stating that he had to decided to prepare and "if necessary, carry out" an invasion of Britain. So all the fighting that had gone before that was sparring without strategic significance.

The campaign scheduled to begin air fighting 10 August (and aimed at British airfields) was postponed by weather until 13 August, and sustained its first major defeat on 15 August when air fleets based in Norway (and lacking fighter protection) were mauled by Fighter Command squadrons in the northern counties. The RAF claimed 183 enemy aircraft and actually shot down 76 - the Luftwaffe's largest one-day loss of the Battle. The German squadrons based in Norway thereafter became redundant - and there was a limit to how many could be switched to France, Holland and Belgium because of limited airfield capacity. The next major defeat came more slowly; it took the Luftwaffe about ten days to realize that, with or without fighter escort, the Ju.87 Stuka was cold meat and could not survive - so another 300 or 400 aircraft were left to sit idle while the rest of the Luftwaffe carried on.

Meanwhile, the German High Command was divided. The army was confident, considering SEA LION to be a large river crossing. The German navy was terrified of the Royal Navy and was most insistent on air superiority (Norway had demonstrated that the German air force - with no significant RAF opposition - could neutralize the Royal Navy and allow the Kriegsmarine get on with its job). Goering was confident he could knock out the RAF. Some of his juniors were not so sure.

In retrospect, we can see that the Luftwaffe never stuck at one job long enough to finish it. They attacked the radar net for a few days, concluded they had destroyed it (when they had not) and moved on to bombing airfields plus sector control centres. They came near to winning that phase (it has been argued that, had an invasion been launched in the period 28 August to 6 September, the Luftwaffe would have had air superiority over Kent). Instead, with Fighter Command on the ropes, they switched objectives again and went after London starting 6 September - in revenge for an RAF raid on Berlin which in turn had been provoked by a German night bomber getting lost and dumping its load on London, contrary to orders.

Once the Luftwaffe went for London their operations made no strategic sense. The most important days in this phase are September 15, 17, 18 and 21. The raids of the 15th resulted in the shooting down of 56 German aircraft (though Fighter Command claimed 185); on the 17th orders were issued to disband the glider assault forces based in Holland (an admission that an airborne landing would not be possible); heavy losses on the 18th were another shock. The losses themselves were not intolerable - the trouble was that, having been told repeatedly that Fighter Command was down to its last few aircraft, the Spitfires and Hurricanes kept appearing in undiminished numbers. Goering finally lost confidence in his own intelligence system. SEA LION was effectively "postponed" on 21 September - which means that from then until 31 October the air war was once again sparing without strategy. The "official" Battle of Britain extends over 113 days but the real (i.e. significant) Battle lasted only 39 days !


A couple of points: exaggerated claims of German losses: these were not the result of propaganda but an overzealous press and an Air Ministry anxious to please the press by providing figures as quickly as possible. The RAF itself knew within a few days of each action how many German aircraft were being shot down (all they had to do was count the wrecks and add a few for machines crashing at sea) - but by then events had moved on.

Left out of Battle of Britain figures are Bomber Command crews. The battle is considered a fighter campaign, but the Germans were assembling barges from all over western Europe for the planned assault (and an awful lot of freight moved around Europe via barges). Every barge destroyed by RAF bombing not only lessened the feasibility of invasion, but also complicated subsequent freight movement in Europe. But nobody gave the Bomber Command crews a clasp to their 1939-1945 Star. In fact, although the bombers were beginning to hit their stride at barge destruction by mid-September, the decision to postpone SEA LION had nothing to do with barges and everything to do with a failure of intelligence and confidence when Fighter Command refused to disappear as scheduled.

Had SEA LION been launched, would it have succeeded ? A German attack in June 1940 (immediatelyfollowing up on Dunkirk) would CERTAINLY have succeeded - but of course the Germans were no more prepared to mount an attack than the British were prepared to repell one. An attack in September 1940 would have been costly (especially if Royal Navy vessels got loose among German cross-Channel traffic at night, when the Luftwaffe would be absent. But "costly" does not necessarily mean failure. The Germans would not have had the element of surprise, and many factors would have counted against them - but as the naval action at River Platte (1939) and Singapore (1942) showed, a clever admiral or general may bluff even a superior opponent into self-destruction or surrender. Some actions may be deemed "bold" if they succeed and "reckless" if they fail. Who can say what would have happeded in Kent had boldness (or recklessness)confronted desperation ? Would London, with all its treasures, have been given up to spare it (Paris, 1940) or sytematically destroyed to defend it (Berlin 1945) ?

Magnificent summation, Halliday; so good, in fact, that I'm willing to forgive you for describing Luke as a "sociopath". VBR.

IMHO the best of all the recent spare of BoB books is "The Most Dangerous Enemy" by Stephen Bungay. Beautifully written by a man with a pilot's soul and an ISO 9002 compliant BS detector.

[Shooter]

Hugh:

Your synopsis is well organized and logical. It also dove-tails with all of the facts I have at my disposal (aka: I agree). In addition to the lack of good post-strike analysis the Luftwaffe consistantly over-estimated Fighter Command's losses. They constantly expected the RAF to run out of a/c (the Luftwaffe never understood that UK fighter production was ample to replace the loss rate inflicted, but pilot production was totally insufficient to keep up with demand).

I do not so readily accept the theory that Sea Lion could succeed.

In order to create an invasion fleet of landing barges, the Wehrmacht commandeered most of the commercial barges in all of Western Europe (where barge traffic moved a large percentage of material through a system of canals). The economic inpact caused by the lack of canal transport was considerable in the short term and would have been catostrophic if the lack had been indefinate.

The Royal Navy had, at the time, around 600 destroyers, escorts, frigates, etc. These vessals could have easily been sacrificed to sink the German invasion fleet, without the commitment of a single capital ship. The British destroyers could have been replaced over time (maybe even the crews), but the barges, once gone, could not be replaced so easily, and the effect on the European economy would have been a disaster.

The initial sea-lift not only had to get ashore, it had to do so without large losses of landing craft. Even if the Luftwaffe could guarantee aircap over the Kanalfront, losses to the German invasion fleet would have devastating. Even at a 6% loss rate per lift, the Germans MIGHT have gotten eight divisions on the shore before they ran out sea-lift. How they would re-supply those divisions is a question.

Sea Lion was never anticipated as being operational, in my opinion. Hitler had already begun to cast longing looks at the East before October of '40. The sea-lift problem could never be resolved in a reasonable amount of time.

BTW, USMC/USN losses to landing craft during opposed landings regularly exceeded 9% during WWII. And this was with an utter lack of enemy air activity.

Something to chew on. . . .

Shooter sends

[alex_revell]

Shooter, Yes. you've said it.But be prepared for a lot of flak. You've been reading Silent Victory by Duncan Grinell-Milne!
Alex

[Shooter]

Alex:

Actually, the facts were gleaned mostly from back-issues of "Command" & "Strategy & Tactics" magazines. "Silent Victory" did play a lesser role.

Taking flak goes with the territory. I try not to cross the more obtuse here on the Forum because personal attacks are bad form and I do not want to encourage those who engage in such tactics, however I am not beyond taking a tangental possistion with the authorities when I think I am right. Hugh seems to get his duckies in a row when he makes his posts, so I seldom respond since I have little that I can add. In this case, I thought I had something that I could throw into the mix.

We'll see what happens next.

Shooter sends

[Barrett]

"People are smart when they agree with you."
Therefore, Shooter is real bright!
It might be instructive to look at Sealion from the other side--offensive rather than defensive (i.e., Overlord in reverse.) With far fewer assets--ground, air/airborne, AND sealift--Germany would have been extremely hard pressed to bring it off because, as noted previously, the opposition possessed considerable air and seapower, and even if diminished during the lead-up to Sealion, it would've been vastly more than the Luftwaffe & Kriegsmarine threw at Normandy. Alex is exactly right that the RN would have been well spent in depleting itself against a German invasion: ironically, the same doctrine that the Soviet Navy envisioned in isolating Europe during a Warsaw/NATO conflict in the 60s to 80s.
Another question is whether Hitler would have allowed Sealion to procede. The German navy took serious losses delivering the army to Norway (a dozen or more destroyers, I think).

I often feel not enough attention is payed to German experiences at Norway, primarily naval, when analyzing Sea Lion. German naval losses were huge, given the lack of opposition. Hugh, your comment:

<<(Norway had demonstrated that the German air force - with no significant RAF opposition - could neutralize the Royal Navy and allow the Kriegsmarine get on with its job)>>

... is the only thing I disagree with you on. Most Royal Navy losses were actually caused by the Kriegsmarine, and they exacted a very heavy cost for them. The KM lost the heavy cruiser Blucher, light cruisers Konigsberg and Karlsruhe sunk, and pocket battleship Lutzow and cruiser Hipper damaged substantially, as well as both Scharnhost and Gneisenau damaged lightly. There were also about 10 destroyers sunk in the raids on Narvik by British destroyers and HMS Warspite. All up, pretty much every large ship in the German navy was damaged in some way. And that was against weak and disorganised opposition.

How much worse would it have been in the English channel, especially with contested air space? And a single destroyer flotilla getting in amongst those lumbering barges would have caused a massacre. Seems inescapable to me that Hitler made a sound tactical decision not to undertake Sealion without total air supremacy.

The only other way I see it could have worked was if the U-boats were employed in the Channel en masse, but the U-boats were a catastrophic failure in Norway due to failure of their torpedos (U-Boat ace Gunther Prien reportedly had a British capital ship - I forget which - in his sights, but the firing mechanisms were defective).

Regards,

Simon

PS It's amazing how far a thread can take you off topic, isn't it?

I take the critiques of my submission as informed (though in some ways as speculative as myself). I agree that U-boats in support of SEALION would have beeen ineffetive (Peter Padfield, WAR BENEATH THE SEA is instructive). In fact, I would agree that the British had a better chance of repelling a September invasion than the Germans had in succeeding - but again, the fortunes of war are fickle and unprectictable.

Hitler, I think, was willing to mount SEALION, provided there was little risk - and the Battle of Britain was a British success precisely because it introduced the necessary element of uncertainty to German planning that would "spook" Hitler. However, the twists and turns of his mind were complex, and I recommend a recent book to demonstrate how complicated were the options on both sides - John Lukacs, THE DUEL: 10 MAY-31 JULY 1940: THE EIGHTY-DAY STRUGGLE BETWEEN CHURCHILL AND HITLER (ISBN0-89919-967-4).