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Divisions amongst historians

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While the overall course and aftermath of the battle is not in dispute, there is evidence of differences between historians over its effect on the Luftwaffe's strength for the rest of the war.

British historian Stephen Bungay had the following view:

In the summer of 1940, the RAF dealt the Luftwaffe a body-blow from which, as Theo Osterkamp ruefully observed, it never recovered, and it heralded a feckless decline. Despite its victories in Russia in 1941, it was never again to be as strong, relative to its enemies, as it was in July 1940.[1]

Dr Williamson Murray, Professor of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and Professor at Ohio State University commented:

Although the Germans had suffered the hardest psychological knocks, since it had been their air offensive that had failed, their reaction seems at best represented by Jeschonnek's remark shortly before the invasion of Russia: "At last a proper war!". Before going on to examine the full implications of such a statement, one should note that Jeschonnek and the General Staff paid minimal attention to the attrition that had taken place, not only in the Battle of Britain but in the land campaign that had preceded it. Thus, willfully and confidently, they embarked on a campaign to conquer the largest nation in the world with an air force that quantitatively was virtually the same size as it had been the previous year and that was arguably weaker in terms of crew experience and training. Moreover, industrial production of aircraft had stagnated for the third consecutive year.[2]

Professor John Buckley wrote:

The Luftwaffe was afforded just enough time before launching Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 to make good its losses suffered over the British Isles and in France. However the quality of its pilots and aircrew was already declining as the experienced personnel of Spain, Poland, Scandinavia and France had been whittled away by high rates of attrition endured even by victorious air forces. Clearly, the Luftwaffe which prepared for the invasion of the USSR was not the force it had once been.[3]

British aviation historian Jon Lake wrote:

Everyone 'knows' that the Battle of Britain marked a historic victory for the RAF, and a humiliating defeat for the Luftwaffe. This is, however, a dangerously simplistic conclusion. Long after the end of the Battle, German aircraft were able to operate over Britain, attacking targets with virtual impunity. The Luftwaffe had been unable to achieve the air supremacy required for an invasion, and admittedly failed to crush its enemy. But at the same time the RAF had similarly failed to destroy the Luftwaffe, and was unable to win complete control of its own airspace. In the end, Fighter Command achieved its stated (and relatively modest) aim by surviving intact long enough to keep Britain in the war and to deny Hitler any chance of invading, while the Luftwaffe failed to achieve its more ambitious aims. In that sense, at least, the RAF 'won' the Battle. ... Some serious historians have concluded that the Battle of Britain marked the beginning of the end of for Germany, confidently stating that the Luftwaffe never again mounted a serious challenge to Allied superiority in the air. This is at least extremely questionable, even if we accept that the Battle of Britain marked a victory for the RAF. No-one can seriously claim that the RAF's disastrous probing raids of 1941 and 1942 (and especially the wasteful fiasco that was Dieppe) were anything but long-running and costly defeat for the RAF. ... Whatever the various historical angles, there was a very definitive and distinctive battle for air superiority over southern England in the summer of 1940, and this was very different in extent and character from the sporadic raiding and night bombing that followed it. And while the RAF did not manage to destroy the Luftwaffe, it did prevent the Germans from gaining air supremacy over Britain, and did impose such high costs that the daylight bombing by massed formations had to be abandoned. If the threat of invasion was ever more than heavily crafted illusion, then the RAF prevented that happening too, and kept Britain in the war. At the very least it represented a modest and partial victory for Britain. It gave a glimpse of what was possible, opening a chink in the myth of Nazi invulnerability, and almost certainly saved Britain from the same fate as France.[4]

British aviation historian John Foreman wrote:

Certainly the major phase of daylight assault has changed, but the battle was by no means finished. Only the German tactics have changed. The magic date of 'October the thirty-first' is of course, widely accepted, but German historians disagree vehemently; they maintain that the German Luftwaffe continued to attack Britain both night and day until May 1941 - which cannot be denied. [...] It's hard to dispute this logic. The battle ends when the attacker ceases his attacks, or is defeated. This raises another contentious question; if the Royal Air Force 'won' the battle, surely the Luftwaffe were defeated—and again this could not be further from the truth. Within six months the German Air Force had been instrumental in reversing all British gains in North Africa, had aided the Wehrmacht in forcing the British Expeditionary Force out of Greece and Crete and had achieved the most crushing air supremacy in Russia - the latter equalled only by the Israeli Air Force in the Six-Day War of 1967. A 'beaten' air force? Not until May 1945.[5]

H. P. Willmott, Lecturer at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and at University of Greenwich, summarised the outcome of the battle as:

In military terms, the Battle of Britain was both small-scale and of limited significance... The only practical result of the campaign was that after September the RAF possessed a greater measure of air superiority over southern England in daylight hours than it had in August: in every other respect Britain's position was unchanged. At no point could she challenge Germany's control of western Europe... In addition, the reality of the situation was that British naval power in 1940 was barely able to ensure Britain against defeat by the strangulation of her trade... In political terms the events of the summer of 1940 were seen as a German failure, most obviously by Britain which saw her own immediate survival the first Allied victory of the war and confirmation of her undiminished, indeed enhanced, status. ... But Britain's ability to survive in 1940 was crucially important in buying time for the United States to embark upon industrial and military mobilisation, and it was decisive in convincing a sympathetic American High Command that Britain would not surrender. ... Once the Battle of Britain had been won, and Roosevelt returned to the White House for an unprecedented third term, the administration set out to achieve what Britain could not: Britain's survival. Even after drawing up resources of her Empire, Britain could not sustain herself in a war with Germany. By April 1941 Britain's gold reserves had been reduced to a level insufficient to cover one day's trading, but by then the Roosevelt administration had devised Lend-Lease (11 March) and was embarked upon a forward policy in the North Atlantic that by the end of the year was to see the United States' involvement in the war as Britain's ally.[6]

Both the Luftwaffe and RAF had suffered significant losses throughout the campaign. The RAF lost 959 aircraft; 477 fighter aircraft and 381 bomber aircraft. Human casualties were 915 aircrew killed and 185 wounded. Equipment worth £1,000,000 was abandoned. The victory was not cheap for the Luftwaffe. Some 28 percent of its force was destroyed, a loss of 1,428 aircraft. If aircraft that were damaged are included, which amounted to 488, this loss total reaches 36 percent of the force negatively effected. Of the losses 1,129 were lost to enemy action.[7][8]

General Franz Halder, the chief of staff of the Army, presented the first plan for Fall Gelb ("Case Yellow") on 19 October 1939, the pre-war codename of plans for campaigns in the Low Countries: the Aufmarschanweisung N°1, Fall Gelb, or "Deployment Instruction No. 1, Case Yellow".[9] This was a limited operation in which Luxembourg and the Low Countries were to be conquered in order to provide a base for further operations against France at a later date.[10] The plan was a less ambitious re-run of the infamous Schlieffen Plan which failed during the First World War in 1914.[10] It was rejected by Adolf Hitler. At the turn of the year, Heinz Guderian's chief of staff, Erich von Manstein secured Hitler's attention. An ambitious thrust through the Ardennes was suggested. It would be the main attack which would use up the majority of the motorised and tank divisions (Panzer Divisions). A diversion operation in Belgium and the Netherlands would precede this thrust, to lure the Allied Armies, including the British Expeditionary Force, into a trap.[11][12]

Strategic and Operational issues

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A group of men sitting and lying on a grass field reading maps, with a bomber aircraft in the background
A Dornier Do 17 crew rest and plan the next sortie in France towards the end of the campaign, 21 June 1940.

The serious losses of the spring campaign had weakened the Luftwaffe before the Battle of Britain.[13] Embarking on a fresh campaign immediately thereafter was a daunting task. However, this was not the only German problem. A series of strategic, technological and tactical problems had to be tackled and solved before the OKL could solve the "British question". Matters were made worse by the lax attitude of the OKW and Hitler himself. With Hitler busy enjoying the success in France there was no one with the strategic vision to take the initiative—a state of affairs precisely in accordance with his wishes. Hitler was convinced Britain would sue for peace. Even if the British forced the issue, the belief in the superiority of German arms, dominant among the General Staff, meant victory was only a matter of time. However, while Germans had mastered the tactical and operational lessons of the First World War, they failed to understand or grasp the essentials of strategy, as they had also failed to do in the first conflict. The Kriegsmarine had squandered its assets in the battles of the Norwegian Campaign for little strategic gain; the Army drew up a plan for an amphibious assault without regard for the disparity in naval forces and the Luftwaffe paid minimal attention to supporting a cross-channel landing in the belief that once the RAF was defeated it would be unnecessary. To that end, Goring ordered his service to destroy the RAF in its entirety. RAF Bomber Command would be destroyed as well as RAF Fighter Command. Should this be achieved, the ability of the British to defend important industry, ports, shipping and its Navy would be diminished.[14]

However, air superiority represented a difficult task to achieve. German medium bombers could only hit targets in southern England during daylight as the limited range of the Luftwaffe's premier fighter, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, permitted only a short journey into enemy territory. The bombers could not travel outside of this range and expect to suffer acceptable attrition rates. This state of affairs allowed the RAF to create a reserve area where crews could be trained, and the industrial heartland of the West Midlands and Manchester could continue production undisturbed. The limited range of the Bf 109 also allowed another important option; should the pressure become too great on Fighter Command, the RAF could withdraw northwards. When Sealion was launched they could resume the struggle to support the Royal Navy after reorganising.[15][16]

The pause between the defeat of France and the air offensive over Britain was due to more than just German overconfidence that Britain would accept peace terms. The losses of the spring demanded considerable time to replace. Crews needed to be integrated with new units and surviving crews needed rest. The transfer to permanent French bases along the English Channel coast required a large logistical effort which involved considerable difficulties. These were gradually overcome.[17] However, even so, the Luftwaffe began Adlertag with only 71 percent of its bomber force, 85 percent of its Bf 109 units, and 83 percent of its Bf 110 units operational. From this point on all three unit types declined. The Bf 110 units declined slowly but the Bf 109 units had reached 81 percent a week after Aldertag while the bomber units strength fell to just 61 percent.[18]

  1. ^ Bungay 2000, pp. 372–373.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Murray 1983, p. 56 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Buckley 1999, p. 132.
  4. ^ Lake, 2000. pp. 226-227
  5. ^ Foreman 1988, p. 8
  6. ^ Willmott 1989, pp. 111–113.
  7. ^ Hooton 2007, p. 90.
  8. ^ Murray 1983, p. 40.
  9. ^ Healy 2007, pp. 5—8.
  10. ^ a b Bond 1990, p.42.
  11. ^ Healy 2007, pp. 8—11.
  12. ^ Bond 1990, pp. 43—44.
  13. ^ Murray 1983, p. 44.
  14. ^ Murray 1983, pp. 39, 44—45.
  15. ^ Murray 1983, p. 46.
  16. ^ Hooton 1994, p. 20.
  17. ^ Murray 1983, p. 47.
  18. ^ Murray 1983, p. 51.
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