Battle of Britain

History -- Military history -- List of battles -- History of the United Kingdom -- World War II -- British military history of World War II

A major campaign of World War II, the Battle of Britain is the name for the attempt by Germany's Luftwaffe to gain control of British airspace and destroy the Royal Air Force (RAF). Secondary objectives were to destroy aircraft production and intimidate the British people into neutrality or surrender. The campaign was launched as preparation for a planned invasion of Britain across the English Channel (Operation Sealion).

British histories state the battle ran from 10 July to 31 October 1940, which was the most intense period of daylight air raiding. However, German sources begin the battle in mid-August 1940 and end it in 1941 on completion of the night Blitz against Britain.

The Battle of Britain was the not first major campaign fought entirely in the air as the British mainland had already suffered a prolonged series of attacks by Zeppelin and long range bombers during World War I. However, the battle was the largest and most sustained strategic bombing campaign yet attempted and the first real test of the strategic bombing theories that had emerged since the previous World War.

Background

The British count the beginning of the battle from the Luftwaffe's attacks on British convoys in the English Channel in July 1940, but the main phase attacks did not commence until August. Following the British evacuation from Dunkirk and the French surrender in June, the Germans were uncertain what to do next. Adolf Hitler believed the war was over and that the British, defeated on the continent, would come to terms very soon. However, he was to be frustrated by British intransigence. Though there was a strand of public and political sentiment that favoured a negotiated peace with Germany, the Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused to countenance an armistice with the Nazis. His skilful use of rhetoric turned public opinion against a peaceful resolution and prepared the British for a long war. In a speech to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940 he stated: "What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin."

Britain's rejection of German terms was emphatic. In an effort to finish the war in the West, Hitler ordered preparation of an invasion plan on 16 July. He hoped to intimidate Britain into peace before the invasion was launched and used the invasion preparations as a means to apply pressure. The plan was prepared by the OKW (Armed Forces High Command). The operation, code-named Seelöwe (Sealion), was planned for mid-September 1940 and called for landings on Britain's south coast, backed by an airborne assault. All preparations were to be made by mid-August.

Sealion was a deeply flawed plan, suffering from a lack of resources -- particularly sea transport -- and disagreements between the German Navy and Army. With the threatening bulk of the Royal Navy within a day's steaming of the Channel it seems unlikely in hindsight that the plan could ever have worked. On one thing all the German services agreed: the plan was impossible unless the Luftwaffe could win air superiority. With control of the air the Royal Navy could be beaten off and the British defences pummelled into submission.

So the first task at hand was to win air superiority by destroying the RAF as a fighting force. A plan was hatched to attack RAF airfields and aircraft production centres. The Luftwaffe commander, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring called his plans Adlerangriff (Eagle Attack), which would begin on August 11 with Adlertag (Eagle Day). Prior to Adlertag there was a month of attacks on convoys in the English Channel. This period of fighting was called Kanalkampf (Channel Battle) by the Germans and was used as an opportunity to test the RAF's defences and lure their fighters up to fight.

Luftwaffe Strategy

German strategy was influenced by pre-war theories on strategic bombing, such as those espoused by Emilio Douhet. This stressed the air assualt, the weakness of air defence, and the effects of terror bombing on public morale. After the Spanish Civil War for reasons of pragmatism the emphasis of Luftwaffe operations had shifted toward a more tactical force, operating in concert with the Army, creating the Blitzkrieg or "lightning war" that had made Germany the victors in Poland and France. However, there remained a strong belief in strategic bombing.

Initial Luftwaffe estimates of the duration of the campaign was for four days to defeat the RAF's Fighter Command in southern England, followed by four weeks in which bombers and long-range fighters would mop up the rest of the country and destroy Britain's aircraft industry. The plan was to begin attacks on airfields near to the coast, gradually rolling subsequent attacks inwards toward London and the ring of Sector airfields defending it. Broadly, the Luftwaffe kept to this scheme, but the force was riven by factions, with commanders having differences of opinion on strategy. The commander of Luftflotte 3, Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, wanted to eradicate the air defence infrastructure by bombing. His counterpart in Luftflotte 3, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, demanded to attack London directly -- either to bombard the British government into submission or draw RAF fighters up into a decisive battle. Göring did nothing to clarify strategy between his commanders, obsessed as he was with maintaining his own powerbase in the Luftwaffe and indulging his outdated beliefs on air fighting which were later to lead to tactical and strategic errors.

The Luftwaffe was ill-served by their lack of intelligence on the British defences. The German intelligence services were fractured, riven by rivalries and their overall performance was amateurish. By 1940 there were few or no German agents operating in Britain and a handful of bungled attempts to insert spies into the country were foiled. This meant that the Luftwaffe had almost no recent knowledge of the workings of the RAF's air defences: in particular of the crucial command and control system that had been built prior to the war. Even when good information existed, such as 5th Abteilung's assessment of Fighter Command strengths and capabilities, it was ignored if it didn't match recieved wisdom. So for much of the battle the Luftwaffe operated 'blind', unaware of their enemy's true strengths, capabilities or even their basing arrangements. Many times the leadership believed Fighter Command strength had collapsed, while raids against airfields that were believed to contain fighters fell instead on bomber or coastal defence installations. The results of bombing and air fighting were exaggerated, resulting in a Luftwaffe leadership that became increasingly disconnected from reality. This lack of leadership and solid intelligence meant that the Germans did not adopt any consistent strategy, even when the RAF had its back to the wall.

The Dowding System

The keystone of the British defence was not the eight-gun monoplane fighter -- the Spitfire or Hurricane -- made justly famous by the campaign; it was the complex machinery of detection, command and control that ran the battle. This was known as The Dowding System after its chief architect: Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, the commanding officer of RAF's Fighter Command, known to his men as "Stuffy".

Dowding's system began with early warning detection of incoming raids by radar, known by the codename "Radio Direction Finding" or RDF. Radar stations codenamed Chain Home lined the coast, watching enemy raids form up over France. Raiders that penetrated the radar chain were picked up by the Observer Corps, a civil organization that would track the raids visually. Information from radar and observers was passed back to filtering stations that sorted and organised it. This was then passed on to various headquarters: to the Fighter Command headquarters at Stanmore and the HQ of each fighter Group. The information would appear on plotting tables: large maps on which counters marking the incoming raids would be moved.

It is unclear how much the British intercepts of the Enigma cipher, used for high-security German radio communications, affected the battle. Ultra, the information obtained from Enigma intercepts, gave the highest echelons of Britain's command a view of German intentions but it's uncertain how much of this filtered down to Sir Hugh Dowding's desk. However, the 'Y' radio listening service contributed considerably to the early warning of raids, alongside the radar chain.

Britain's airspace was divided up into Groups. 10 Group defended Wales and the West Country and was commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Sir Quintin Brand. 11 Group covered the southeast of England and the critical approaches to London and was commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park. 12 Group defended the Midlands and East Anglia and was led by Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Finally, 13 Group covered the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and was commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Richard Saul.

Each Group area was subdivided into Sectors, each commanding between two and four squadrons. Sector stations -- aerodromes with a command post -- were the heart of this organization, though they also had satellite airfields to disperse squadrons to. Group HQs would pass filtered information down to the sector stations and instruct them to 'scramble' their squadrons into the air. Once airborne, the squadrons would be commanded by radio from their sector station. Squadrons could be ordered to patrol airfields or vital targets, or be 'vectored' to interecept incoming raids.

Though it was the most sophisticated air defence system in the world at that time, the Dowding System was crude and had limitations. The RDF radar was subject to significant errors; the Observer Corps had difficulties tracking raids at night and in bad weather, while radio-telephone (R/T) communications with airborne fighters was limited in range and difficult. Finally, the system for tracking RAF fighters, known as HF/DF or "Huff-Duff", restricted sectors to a maximum of four squadrons in the air.

In spite of this RAF Fighter Command was able to achieve high levels of efficiency, at times achiving interception rates greater than 80%.

The Attacks

The Battle can be roughly divided into four phases:

July - August 11: Kanalkampf, the Channel battles.
August 12 - August 24: Adlerangriff, the early assault against the coastal airfields.
August 25 - September 6: The Luftwaffe targets airfields almost exclusively, hitting the sector stations repeatedly. The critical phase of the battle.
September 7 onwards: London and other major cities are bombed.

The Kanalkampf comprised a series of running fights above convoys of freighter vessels running through the English Channel. In general, these battles off the coast tended to favour the Germans who ran fighter sweeps known as Freie Jagd to catch the RAF fighters or would put up Stuka dive-bombers as bait. Eventually the number of ship-sinkings became so great that the British Admiralty cancelled all further convoys through the Channel.

Adlertag began with the Luftwaffe bombing ports, airfields, aircraft industries, radar installations, etc. Over the course of the next weeks, they flew 12,039 sorties and dropped over 11,000 tons of high explosive bombs and over 616 tons of incendiary bombs.

At first, the main targets for the German Luftwaffe were radar installations and airfields, in an attempt to destroy (either on the ground, or in the air defending the ground targets) or render useless the British fighter planes.

The attacks against the radar installations were not seen as very successful, and appears that Göring continued to underestimate the value of radar to the RAF, and so eventually called off attacks on the stations. In fact radar was absolutely vital to the RAF and the attacks were generally succeeding -- a fact the RAF masked with a successful deception campaign. Attacks on the airbases and factories were also successful, but it was largely impossible for the Luftwaffe to assess the damage on these inland targets.

The weight of the battle fell upon 11 Group. Keith Park's tactics were to dispatch individual squadrons to intercept a raid and commit them when they encountered the enemy. The intention was to subject attackers to continual attacks by relatively small numbers of aircraft and try to break up the tight formations of bombers. During the battle some commanders, notably Trafford Leigh-Mallory of 12 Group, proposed that squadrons should be formed into Big Wings to attack the enemy en masse. Proponents of this tactic claimed that interceptions in large numbers caused greater enemy losses. Opponents pointed out that the big wings would take too long to form up, and that the strategy ran a greater risk of being caught with all the fighters on the ground refuelling at the same time. Post-war analysis agrees that Park's approach was best for 11 Group. However, the controversy affected Park's career after the battle, and contributed to Dowding's dismissal from Fighter Command.

Both sides suffered horribly, but British pilot losses were smaller since most of the fights were fought over British soil, whereas every German crew that had to bail out was lost to the German war effort. Also R.J. Mitchell had designed the Spitfire with a lot of thought for pilot safety when attacked.

Thanks to the seemingly endless numbers of planes the Germans had at their disposal, the Fighter Command began to lose this battle of attrition. This remained largely unknown to the Luftwaffe, which was growing desperate to deliver on the original timetable. What they could see is that for some reason the RAF always had at least a small number of planes to attack with, no matter how many times they sent in raids. Something needed to be done to force the RAF to commit all of their planes -- or so they thought.

One thing that was sure to force their hand would be to attack a large, very public target. That target was London. The first such raid on 7th of September was intended as revenge for the British attack on Berlin on 25th/26th August, which in turn was a response to a German bomber accidentally dropping bombs on London. Although the docks of London were the main target, the British suffered 448 dead and more than 1,300 wounded.

Together with the change of targets came a change in strategy. The success in the Battle of Britain was no longer seen as prerequisite for Seelöwe, but was meant to be decisive in itself. Göring believed that the British would surrender as soon as the RAF was beaten.

On 16th of September the Germans estimated British fighter strength to be no more than 300 planes, when they actually had 572 Spitfires and Hurricanes. What was even less clear was that switching from the airfields would allow the RAF to work on their aircraft and allow their pilots rest.

But without a doubt the most damaging aspect of the switch to London was the ranges involved. By the time the German fighters arrived over the city, they were already so low on fuel as to have to turn home. This left all too many raids completely undefended as their fighters turned for home after minor combat on the way to target.

The result was a series of disastrous raids. On September 19th Operation Seelöwe was postponed indefinitely. But the Battle of Britain was not over. From October 1940 until the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, almost 40,000 additional sorties were flown and more than 38,000 tons of high explosive bombs and more than 3,500 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped.

Both sides in the battle made exaggerated claims of numbers of enemy aircraft shot down. In general claims were two to three times the actual numbers, mainly due to confusion in the whirling air battles. However, post-war analysis of records has shown that between July and September the RAF lost 1,023 fighter aircraft to all causes, while the Luftwaffe losses stood at 1,887, of which 873 were fighters. To the RAF figure should be added an additional 376 Bomber Command and 148 Coastal Command aircraft that conducted vital bombing, mining and reconnaissance operations in support of the fighter defence.

Aftermath

Overall the Battle of Britain was a significant British victory. Though the battle was small in terms of combatants and casualties, had the Germans triumphed the war would have taken a very different path. The British victory marked the first failure of Hitler's war machine. It also signalled a shift in American opinion at a time when many Americans believed that Britian could not survive.

Modern scholarship suggests the battle was unwinnable for the Luftwaffe. Their numerical superiority was not sufficient to achieve superiority while the theories of strategic bombing, which hinged on the collapse of public morale, were undone by British defiance in the face of the day and night Blitzes. The switch to a terror bombing strategy allowed the RAF to recuperate and to defend against the attacks. Even if the attacks on the 11 Group airfields had continued, the British could have afforded to withdraw to the Midlands out of German fighter range and continued the battle from there. Post-war records show that British aircraft were being replaced faster than those of the Germans; the RAF maintained its strength even as the Luftwaffe's declined.

The terror strategy in itself could not force the British to surrender. Even though the Germans launched some spectacular attacks against important British industries, they could not destroy the British industrial potential. But hindsight does not disguise the fact that the threat to the RAF was very real and for the participants it seemed as if there was a "Narrow Margin" between victory and defeat. The victory was as much psychological as physical. It turned a tide of defeats and heartened the enemies of Nazism.

Total British civilian losses from July to December 1940 were 23,002 dead and 32,138 wounded with one of the largest single raids occurring on December 29, 1940 in which almost 3000 civilians died.

Winston Churchill summed up the effect of the battle and the contribution of the RAF in the immortal words: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" (speech to the House of Commons on August 20 1940). Pilots who fought in the battle have been known as The Few ever since.

September 15 is celebrated in Britain as "Battle of Britain Day", marking the unsuccessful attempt by the Luftwaffe on that day to secure local air superiority over London in daylight. In British military tradition, the Battle of Britian is remembered with at least as much pride as Waterloo and Agincourt.