Battle of Britain





A major conflict of World War II, the Battle of Britain covers the attempts
of the German Luftwaffe to gain control of British airspace and destroy the
Royal Air Force (RAF), and, later to demoralise the British population in
the hope of either obtaining neutrality or, if that did not occur, make
possible the invasion of Britain through the English Channel. It was the
first major battle fought entirely in the air. The RAF declare that the
Battle of Britain ran from 10 July to 31 October 1940.

Background

The Luftwaffe began to hit British convoys in the English Channel on July
10, 1940 but the Battle of Britain proper began in August 1940. After the
French collapsed under the Blitzkrieg and surrendered in June, the Germans
were not exactly sure what to do next. Adolf Hitler (and the German people)
believed the war was over and the Britons would come to terms very soon.
Patriotic myth states that stubborn Albion refused to give in. In reality
there was a considerable section of the public and politicians who believed
it was time to negotiate with Hitler. Winston Churchill, however, was the
master of the Cabinet and would not countenance peace, putting Lord Halifax
(one of the pro-peace members of the Cabinet) on the air to reject Hitler's terms.

More direct measures were thought of, but it was not until July that an
invasion plan was prepared by the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). The
operation, code-named Seelšwe (Sea-Lion), planned for an invasion sometime
in mid-September. The plan called for landings in the Dover area, first with
two airborne divisions, and then with another nine delivered by sea. All
preparations were supposed to be made by mid-June to late-August.

Much of the plan relied on makeshift solutions, including the use of river
barges as troop transports, and using discarded aircraft engines for
motorizing them. Others were better thought out, like swimming tanks or
using snorkels on the heavier tanks so they could be landed further out on
sea and march to land on the seabed.

Hindsight suggests that the entire operation was not seriously planned with
actual execution in mind, especially when compared to the careful planning
of Operation Barbarossa. Regardless it was patently impossible to prepare
for the invasion in two months. Indeed Churchill did not take the invasion
threat seriously, sending troops to Africa in the summer of 1940, but he was
concerned over the potential air threat and energetic in securing resources
for the RAF.

But before Seelšwe could begin the Luftwaffe had to destroy the British RAF.
Any invasion would be countered by the Royal Navy's massive fleet, within a
few hours sailing of Dover and able to easily counter anything the
Kreigsmarine could field. To counter this threat OKW relied on the
Luftwaffe, primarily their dive bombers, to at least delay the navy if not
fight it off entirely. In order to do this the Luftwaffe would require
complete air superiority as their bombers were highly vunerable to RAF
fighters.

Thus the first task at hand was to win air superiority by destroying the RAF
as a fighting force. A plan was hatched to directly attack the RAF airfields
and aircraft production centres, Hermann Gšring called his plans
Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack), beginning on August 11 with Adlertag (Eagle
Day). But even before this there was to be a month of attacks on Channel
convoys and the RAF out over the water. This period of fighting was called
Kanalkampf by the Germans.

The British were fully aware of the German goals, strategy, and often even
tactics due to their ability to read the German Enigma cipher, which was
used for most high-security German military radio communications. This fact,
not revealed until the 1970s, was crucial in forming British tactics. They
had also killed or turned all German agents in Britain.

The Germans didn't keep using any single strategy, even when it was on the
verge of defeating the RAF. Most of this was due to a lack of quality
intelligence, combined with early overly exagurated reports of victory early
in the campaign. After concluding that they had shot down the majority of
the RAF, their raids were met with just as many fighters as before, leading
eventually to the conclusion that the RAF was much more powerful than it
was. Another major factor was that Hitler encouraged competing interests in
the High Command to try their pet theories in tactics, thereby never
allowing any one to complete its goals.

The Attacks

The Battle can be crudely divided into four sections:

   * July - August 11: Kanalkampf
   * August 12 - August 24: Adlerangriff
   * August 25 - September 6: Germans attack RAF planes and airfields almost
     exclusively. The critical period of the battle
   * September 7 onwards: London and other major cities are bombed.

Adlertag began with the Luftwaffe bombing ports, airfields, aircraft
industries, radar installations, etc. Over the course of the next weeks,
they flew 12,039 sorties and dropped over 11,000 tons of high explosive
bombs and over 616 tons of incendiary bombs.

At first, the main targets for the German Luftwaffe were radar installations
and airports, in an attempt to destroy (either on the ground, or in the air
defending the ground targets) or render useless the British fighter planes.

The attacks against the radar installations were not seen as very
successful, and appears that Gšring continued to underestimate the value of
the radar to the RAF, and so eventually called off attacks on the stations.
In fact the radar was absolutely vital to the RAF and the attacks were
generally succeeding -- a fact the RAF masked with a successful deception
campaign. Attacks on the airbases and factories were also successful, but it
was largely impossible for the Luftwaffe to assess the damage on these
inland targets.

Thanks to radar and the intelligence from the decoded Enigma messages the
RAF reacted very effectively to the German raids. Hugh Dowding's
communications and infrastructure linking radar and other information
sources to the decision makers was arguably as important as radar. Rather
than sending up large numbers of fighters to meet German raids (and thus
running the risk of having all the planes on the ground for refuelling and
repairs when another raid arrives), British commanders (such as Keith Park
of 11 Group) ordered that only a very few fighters up to meet each raid,
harassing the German bombers enough to make accurate bombing very difficult
and causing far more British losses than German.

Despite the success of Dowding's measured response, soon after the Battle of
Britain some proponents of the Big Wing theory would complain that large
numbers of RAF fighters should have been gathered together to strike German
attacks with greater force. Because the reasons behind their strategy, the
Enigma decrypts, were still secret, Dowding and Park could not defend their
actions as they needed to, and were given much lower positions, Keith Park
eventually climbing back to lead Malta's air strategy.

Both sides suffered horribly, but British pilot losses were smaller since
most of the fights were fought over British soil, whereas every German crew
that had to bail out was lost to the German war effort. Also R.J. Mitchell
had designed the Spitfire with a lot of thought for pilot safety when attacked.

Thanks to the seemingly endless numbers of planes the Germans had at their
disposal, the Fighter Command began to lose this battle of attrition. This
remained largely unknown to the Luftwaffe, which was growing desperate to
deliver on the original timetable. What they could see is that for some
reason the RAF always had at least a small number of planes to attack with,
no matter how many times they sent in raids. Something needed to be done to
force the RAF to commit all of their planes -- or so they thought.

One thing that was sure to force their hand would be to attack a large, very
public target. That target was London. The first such raid on 7th of
September was intended as revenge for the British attack on Berlin on
25th/26th August, which in turn was a response to a German bomber
accidentally dropping bombs on London. Although the docks of London were the
main target attacked, the British suffered 448 dead and more than 1,300 wounded.

Together with the change of targets came a change in strategy. The success
in the Battle of Britain was no longer seen as prerequisite for Seelšwe, but
was meant to be decisive in itself. Gšring believed that the British would
surrender as soon as the RAF was beaten.

On 16th of September the Germans estimated British fighter strength to be no
more than 300 planes, when they actually had 572 Spitfires and Hurricanes.
What was even less clear was that switching from the airfields would allow
the RAF to work on their aircraft and allow their pilots rest.

But without a doubt the most damaging aspect of the switch to London was the
ranges involved. By the time the German fighters arrived over the city, they
were already so low on fuel as to have to turn home. This left all too many
raids completely undefended as their fighters turned for home after minor
combat on the way to target.

The result was a series of disastrous raids. On September 19th Operation
Seelšwe was postponed indefinitely. But the battle of Britain was not over.
From October 1940 until the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, almost 40,000
additional sorties were flown and more than 38,000 tons of high explosive
bombs and more than 3,500 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped. Between
August and September the RAF stated German losses at 1600 aircraft destroyed
and over 500 probables, however despite most of the fighting occurring over
land only 315 wrecks were identified. British Fighter Command lost between
900 and 1900 Hurricanes and Spitfires (depending on which figures you care
to believe).

Overall the Battle of Britain was a British victory, although on a small
scale compared to later battles it was significant, especially in increasing
American anti-Nazi opinion. Although the Germans came very close to beating
the RAF and thus setting the prerequisites for Seelšwe, the switch to terror
strategy allowed the RAF to recuperate and to defend against the attacks.
The terror strategy in itself could not force the British to surrender. Even
though the Germans launched some spectacular attacks against important
British industries, they could not destroy the British industrial potential.

Total British civilian losses from July to December 1940 were 23,002 dead
and 32,138 wounded with one of the largest single raids occurring on
December 29, 1940 in which almost 3000 civilians died.

September 15 is celebrated in Britain as "Battle of Britain Day", marking
the unsuccessful attempt by the Luftwaffe on that day to secure local air
superiority over London in daylight.