"Steven Vincent" wrote in message
...
Keith Willshaw wrote:
"John Freck" wrote in message
om...

Why did Britain win the BoB?

Let us imagine that we are going to be playing a complex wargame
assigned to us some 3rd or 4th year military science course. There
are 20 classmates. Each will have to write a report from either
GErmany's or Britain's perspective, and the grade will determine your
standing on your team when the game is played.
The Battle of the Atlantic is open to play too. In addition, any
commentary on any matter could boost your grade. Such as commenting
on mass communications then and now, or anything that seems intersting
and anytime relevant to military studies.

The setting is July 1st, 1940. What must the Axis do better? And
what must the Allies do better?



The Germans need to

1) Develop drop tanks for the Bf-109
2) Go after the RAF sector control rooms, they
were largely above ground and vulnerable
3) Use the Me-110 as fighter bombers on low level
strike missions not as heavy fighters
4) Get their intel sorted out, attacking coastal command
airbases was a massive waste of resources
5) Target the Supermarine works at Southhampton
and keep hitting it


To me it looks like Germany can improve a lot, and Britain only a
little bit. It is easy for the Axis team to create a shopping list of
things to do better, or more, or less, but what can be put on the
Allies list?



1) Ground the Defiants and requip the squadrons with Hurricanes

They did - Defiants got one or two daylight outings during the BoB.
After that their main roles were Night Fighting (more Effective than
Hurricanes), SAR (safer than a Lysander!) and Convoy cover (Better than
an Anson if range permitted). Better Defiants than Battles - Bomber
command were actually rebuilding Battle squadrons at this time.


They withdrew the squadrons but didnt immediately re-equip
them at a time when pilots were in much shorter supply than
aircraft.

2) Ditch the outdated RAF tactics and adopt the German method

Getting rid of the outdated Vics and formations and going to Finger Four
or Loose Duce tactics yes. RAF tactical control of Fighter formations
was way ahead of the Luftwaffe's.

3) Disperse and reinforce those sector control rooms


4) Increase efforts to disperse aircraft production
5) Kick Leigh-Mallory and Dowding's ass and make them
work as a team, if necessary fire one or other of them.
6) Get the carburettor mods to stop the engine cutting out
under +ve G done as a matter of priority

I think you mean -ve G. Indeed this is the major shortfall that the RAF
should have anticipated


7) Get the bomber force after the German airfields every night
deprive the buggers of sleep if nothing else.

Night intruders would be a good improvement on things but we need to
keep in mind that 2 Group actually did a god job of bombing the invasion
ports and impacting the German build up of barges etc.

Less important than the aircraft production is to get more Pilots into
Fighter command earlier. Dowding - Leigh-mallory is not a real time
issue. Parks vs Leigh-Mallory was an issue but Dowding was on top of
it. Most of the differences there were down to the nature of the
problem in Kent VS north of the Thames. Parks could not use a big wing
because his warning periods were to short to assemble it. Leigh Mallory
had a relatively long period between alert and engagement which could
usefully be used to assemble the big wings. Park's problem was that
LM's reinforcements were taking to long to arrive with the result that
the Germans were being hammered AFTER Park's airfields had been trashed
rather than before.

That said the RAF could have withdrawn from Kent and still punished the
LW enough to prevent Germany being able to secure the beaches. LM's big
wings performing a fighter sweep timed with a mass 2 group attack would
sure mess up Germanys ad hoc landing forces. One thing the post war
aggrandizement and publicity does not make clear is that the RAF was in
no way out of options during the BoB - they continually had the choice
of when and where to engage and were able to conserve and rotate forces
through the whole Battle. The Luftwaffe on the other hand was making a
much more committed effort and with much less flexibility about what
they hit and where.


True enough

One of the things I find most odd about Histories of the Battle of
Britain is how one sided the stories are on the British side. Very few
give Bomber or Coastal command a mention yet these were the forces that
would have been committed to hitting them "on the beaches". The
presence of Fleet Air Arm Fighter Squadrons in the UK are also
unmentiond but their locations would have been such as to "free up" RAF
squadrons.


Yes at the time a every bomber squadron had to keep
an anti-invasion flight on readines 24/7

The big thing that the LW should have done is take out the Radar
stations and the Sector stations. The LW only made one serious attempt
to take out the Radar chain and the RAF managed to cover the resulting
hole with the one replacement radar set they had and a couple of bluffs
that fooled the LW signals into thinking that at least 2 other stations
were still functioning (They were transmitting but the receiver complex
was u/s for a couple of days). The RAF needed to get CH Low going
earlier that was not something that could have been sorted out between
Jan and July '40.


The radar stations were quite hard targets to hit and even if they were
knocked out some warning was available from the observer
corps. The sector stations were the point where everything
converged and in many cases were little more than an Nissen
hut

Given the timeframe the RAF should have been taking over the Skua and
Roc's of the Fleet Air Arm and forming Dive bomber squadrons with them
in place of Battle Squadrons. Capacity was there to do this - BP
produced both Roc and Defiant and it would not have been a major loss to
turn the Roc production over to a Dedicated Skua/Roc Dive Bomber. (2 gun
turret instead of 4, No Wing folding kit etc. - larger bomb load). Note
that these aircraft used Bristol engines so freeing the Merlins for H &
S that would have been used in Battles and Defiants.


The Skua/Roc werent very survivable though and production
was in such small numbers that I doubt ramping up was very
practical. A better option may have been to fit bomb racks
to the P-40's (Tomahawk I and Tomahawk IIA) the RAF
got in June 1940

I am not saying that the Roc dive bomber would have been able to operate
in the face of Bf109's but it would have been an improvement over the
Battle since as a dive bomber it would have had better accuracy at
hitting ships and front line targets than the Battle. Also 2~4 turret
mg's has got to be better than 1 hand trained mg!


Trouble is with the power turret fitted the Roc couldnt carry
the bombload the Skua did, arguably the cleaner, fatster
and more manoeuverable Skua was more survivable.

Keith