Why did Britain win the Battle of Britain?

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Richard Tandy                                                                                November 2003

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Why did Britain win the Battle of Britain?

        After taking France in addition to his list of captured countries on mainland Europe, Adolf Hitler set his sights on Britain. After the success of Blitzkrieg, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the surrender of France, Britain was by herself. However, before Hitler could contemplate undertaking an invasion he was advised by his generals that Germany had to destroy the Fighter Command of the Royal Air Force in order to gain superiority in the air. This would in turn enable him to gain control of the English Channel in order to transfer the 160,000 German troops on the 2000 invasion barges, which had been assembled in German, French and Belgian harbors, over the channel to Britain unscaved. Between august and September in the summer of 1940, under the codename of operation sealion the planes of the German Luftwaffe attacked British airfields, ports and radar stations in an attempt to gain air superiority, while Britain was defended tenaciously by the Royal Air Force. This period of time became known as the Battle of Britain and remains one of the most famous battles of world war two, if Britain had lost, Germany would have invaded. After taking the captured European countries with no serious problems, Hitler expected that Britain too would be an easy target. However, against the odds Britain held out and resisted the German attack.                 In this essay I am going to examine how Britain managed to resist the Luftwaffe and as some would say, win the Battle of Britain. For this essay I will anylise the reasons for the British success under the four main categories of: tactics, technology, organization and preparation and personnel. For each category I will give numerous reasons to why Britain won the Battle of Britain. For example, under the category of technology I could say that one reason why Britain won the battle of Britain was because they had the services of the radar system.  

Firstly, the tactics employed by both sides would play a key role in itself to deciding the outcome of the Battle of Britain.                                                                 The battle started on July 10th 1940 when the Luftwaffe attempted to gain control of the Straits of Dover. The tactics employed by the Luftwaffe was to tempt the RAF out for a full-scale battle. However, by the end of July, the RAF had lost 150 aircraft while the Luftwaffe had lost 268. These figures illustrate that there was a much greater loss of aircraft experienced by Germany than the British. These large losses of planes from the outset of a battle would have been a significant blow to any army however, this would have damaged German morale as a greater loss of planes was not something they would have contemplated and as they were coming into this battle with such high expectations, this would have been a significant blow to the Luftwaffe and a stern wake up call to their commanders. However, Britain too was suffering, it was the loss of trained pilots that was crippling the RAF, and the real battle had yet to begin.                                        In August, the Luftwaffe changed their tactics and started to attack Fighter Command's airfields, operation rooms and radar stations - the idea being that the RAF could be destroyed on the ground so that the Luftwaffe need not fight them in the air. Without radar the RAF would be seriously hampered in terms of early warning and the destruction of operation rooms would cut off communications between fighter bases and those at the heart of the battle controlling the movement of fighter planes. Destroyed runways would hamper the chances of a fighter plane taking off. The German's had set  for 10th August, as soon as the radar network had been taken out. However, Britain had the elements to thank as bad weather stopped the Luftwaffe from these daily raids in August and the attack on the radar stations could not take place until . The Germans did manage to severely damage the radar network - but not break it - and it cost them dearly in terms of aircraft. The British were able to repair the radar, meet the Eagle onslaught, and shoot down 46 planes for a loss of only 13. Further attacks on the 14th and 15th August cost the Germans 75 aircraft for the loss of 35 British planes. The Germans had shot their bolt and it had failed. Yet despite this, the Germans were gaining the advantage simply because they could afford to lose planes and pilots and the British could not. The RAF were pushed to almost breaking point, but the Germans could not break them no matter how hard they tried.

Following this however, came August 15th, which is seen as a key date in the war. The Royal Air Force had been concentrating their efforts on the German Fighter planes. However, following the Luftwaffe’s strategic bombing of the British points of interest such as the Radar Stations and runways as previously mentioned, the British command realized that the important targets were the German Bomber planes and not the Fighter planes. Therefore, the RAF changed their tactics and instead switched to concentrating their efforts on the German Bomber planes. In addition, Britain also switched their factories from producing Bomber Planes to producing Fighter Planes to try and counteract the Germans now that it was understood where the current priorities lay. As a result by August 15 nearly all of the German Stuka dive-bombers were destroyed by this date as they fell easy prey to the British fighter planes. Therefore, pin-point bombing of radar stations was all but impossible. This was obviously an important change of tactics made by Britain, which would consequently improve Britain’s chances of victory.                                                                                                         Also, the German fighters were told to fly close together, which made it easier for the British planes of the Royal Air Force to attack them. This tactical error made by the Germans would have handed an advantage to the British.  Dowding also advised the Royal Air Force to sent squadrons of planes out at a time instead of sending all of the planes out at once. This tactic could mean that Britain would not receive as many losses and this could be an important factor in determining if the Royal Air Force would last. After all they didn’t have as many units as the Germans and they had to make every plane count.

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From the outset the British generals knew they had their backs against the wall in resisting the planes of the German Luftwaffe who not only outnumbered the planes of the RAF by four to one, but were furthermore controlled by the best-trained pilots in the world. Therefore, the British command knew they had to create every advantage possible and make them count. From the outset the British command employed the tactic of different commanders running different squadrons. With each squadron within the RAF controlled by different sets of command, this gave the RAF flexibility as any decisions within each squadron ...

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