Why were the major cities of Britain bombed by Germans in 1940-41?

The first attacks were in July and the Luftwaffe started bombing airfields and factories. At first the R.A.F responded well and more enemy planes were being shot down than friendly planes. This was probably due the British pilots being able to refuel and get back up in the sky quickly whereas the German fighter pilots had a limited time and range (just 8 minutes over London), which meant that they could not escort their bombers very efficiently. The British fighter planes also had an advantage over the Germans, the ‘spitfire’ was one of the fastest planes of its time and the ‘hurricane’ had the tightest turning circle which was found to be incredibly useful in ‘dog-fights’. What also helped the British fighters was the fact that they had radar and although it was still in it’s primitive stages it gave the British fighters the ability to see the Germans from great distances. Despite all of this eventually the tide began to turn and Germans began to win. This was probably because the industry was manufacturing more planes than pilots. It took much longer to properly train a pilot than to make a ‘spitfire’, ultimately new British pilots were going in the air with only 10 hours flying experience.

It was said that if the German attacks had lasted two more weeks then the Battle of Britain would have been lost but, fortunately, when the R.A.F was on its last knees the German attacks suddenly stopped. This was because a German bombing squad accidentally missed its target and on the way back it jettisoned its bombs (without realising it) over London. In retaliation the R.A.F bombed Berlin and Hitler, seeing how much chaos had been caused by this one attack decided to try to break the morale of the British people (which would be a key step in winning the war) by bombing the cities in the night time. While bombing the British cities the German fighters could not only break the morale of the British people but they could also continue to bomb the factories and put Britain in total disorder.