The Battle of Britain as a turning point in the Second World War.In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe (German air force)

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The Battle of Britain as a turning point in the Second World War.In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe (German air force) tried to gainair superiority over southern Britain by destroying the RAF and theBritish aircraft industry. This attempt came to be known as the Battleof Britain. If Germany wanted to invade Britain then they needed tohave complete control of the skies. The Germans had already taken overBelgium, the Netherlands and Northern France, using a tactic known asBlitzkrieg or 'Lightning War'. This was successful sue to wellcoordinated air and ground troops. However the Luftwaffe could notattack Britain as easily due to it being an island. The ME 109E onlyhad a range of 700 km so it had only 15 minutes' fuel over Kent andwas at the limit of its range over London.The Battle of Britain began on 30 June 1940. Reichsmarschall HermannGöering, head of the Luftwaffe, ordered his force to draw the RAF intobattle by attacking coastal convoys and bombing radar stations alongthe south coast, installations of the British aircraft industry, andRAF airfields. In two weeks of air fighting, one quarter of Britishpilots were killed or badly injured. For 53 nights they came everynight. On 7th September 1940 the Luftwaffe started the blitz witch wasthe bombing of all the major towns and cities in Britain. Then on the15th September 1940 the German planes started attacking during the dayas well as at night. The whole point was to make way for “OperationSea lion” witch was a sea invasion of the southern coast of Britain.Operation Sea lion was a plan to transport 300,00 German troops ontothe South East shores of Briton. The Germans did not have properlanding crafts though so they had to use 1000 pleasure cruisers and400 fishing boats that had been modified to carry the troops and heavyequipment. The ships that they used were no suitable and they couldnot go out in Gail force six. They would not stand a chance againstthe British’s 80 destroyers, 5 Major Battle ships and 11 cruisers.Germany at that time only had 10 destroyers and 5 cruisers. So withnavy 20 times smaller then the British it was never really going tohappen even if they had control of the air. And it looked like Hitlernoticed this as well. Hitler told his generals that he would notattempt to invade Britain if the task seemed too dangerous.Hitler started to back away from invasion the battle for dominance ofthe skies over England and the English Channel as it now had verylittle strategical importance.On 3 September Field Marshal Keitel delayed Sea lion until 21September, and then again until 27 September and that was the lasttime that the tides would be right for that year. The day after thisthe final major mission to destroy RAF Fighter Command took placeduring the day. It was a dismal failure, with the Luftwaffe losingtwice as many aircraft as it the RAF. On 17 September Operation Sealion was postponed indefinitely. Hitler was reported to have said atthis time “I do not intend to carry on with Operation Sea Lion. Thereare no Bridges over the sea. On land I am a hero, on sea I am acoward”. The plan was never to be revived. In 1944 Britain's defencesagainst sea-borne attack were scaled down. By that date it was finallycertain that the German army, which had been slaughtered in Russia,could not actually invade Britain any more.Destroying the RAF would have been the first difficult step to aGerman victory, but it was not the only factor. The Germans would alsofind out that the Britons would have plenty of tricks up theirsleeves. Because the German planes could not go very far over Britonthen the RAF could have just moved their planes out of the Germansreach. Or if Briton started losing the battle for the skies then theycould have just pulled their planes into reserve in case the Germansdid invade so that they could try to repel them. Another mistake thatGermany made was to underestimate the strength of the British airforce and the British aviation industry's production capacity. Germanyactually believed that they could destroy the RAF Fighter Command infour days and the aviation industry in four weeks. However the Britishhad over-estimated the strength and competence of the German airforce. This was worrying, but was not something to damage theirchances of winning the Battle. Britain they also had radar to helpdirect the fighters
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to intercept attacking German aircraft. The factthat the Germans had no other way of destroying the RAF than to attackthe island itself was a bad point for the Germans. Usually in the‘Lighting Strike’ attacks Germany normally did on other countries thatthey wee bordered with if one o their planes were shot down the pilotstood a chance of getting back behind his own lines or the countrywould be invaded so quickly he could be picked up. This could nothappen with the attack on Briton though. A downed German pilot overBriton was lost to Germany as there was the channel to cross ...

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