Originally posted by Angus
Not all true Knegel.
Your description applies to the latest phase of the BoB, - when the LW is attacking London in daylight and finally the controllers had enough time to vector some proper force (including 12th group) to altitude and into a good interception position.
But the first phases of the BoB were at the south coast, - first the convoys, then the radar sites then the airfields of FC. That left FC with very little time and as many have pointed out, - including those big wing theorists at the time, - the FC was responding to amazingly well supported raids with "penny pockets" of fighters. I can go and dig up some data on this but really, - sometimes a dozen or so of RAF fighters attacked a force with really heavy escorts, - many times their number. And there were long and hard dogfights about.
But once that the humble 50 miles or so from the coast to London had to be added, the LW was screwed. It gave RAF the time it needed to gather a bigger force - as said in the beginning.
Hi,
yes, in the early phase the RAF got in trouble and the HQ was up to regroupe the fighters more backward, but then Mr.Goering decided to attack London.
But even in the early phase they never made real massattacks to one airbase. They always attacked different airbases and other groundtargets at same time, in this way the german forces got splitted up. Rommel would have attacked one base with all forces and then the next, same like the USAAF most made it over germany. This would have given the LW its advantage in numbers, but the LW HQ was used to the tactical airwar, not to strategical airwar, therfor they used the wrong tactics.
The Bf109E was even on the south side of England badly handycaped by the missing droptank, specialy while escortflights.
Climbing to 5-6000m and meeting the bombers already grapped much of the range. Therefor the bombers often had to fly a direct course to target.
And much more important, the Bf109´s often wasnt able to follow the british fighters to their bases, after they disengaged. This was the big advantage of the P51 in 1944, they could follow the 190´s, 109´s and 262´s.
That the performence of the 109(next to the range) dont was a problem the results in Africa show, where a droptank was available in the 109E4b and E7b, and even here, same like in russia, the german fighter bases always was very close to the frontline.
As far as i know the Radar was available from the beginning of BoB. They already could see the german bombers forming up, so they was able to let the fighters on the ground until they was needed. Without radar they would have needed a patroul system, this would have minimized the power, or they wouldnt have been able to intercept the bombers with a altitude advantage and for sure not before they reached the targets in the south.
The losses of the 109´s also was relative high, cause they fought over enemy area. If a Spit or Hurri got light damaged, they often could land, but how many light damaged or fuelless 109´s sunk in the channel?
Even in best circumstances the 109E had only 30min in combat area(britsh coast to London), while 'Freie Jagd' in more low level it particular maybe was a bit more, thats still not much, nevertheless in this system the 109E was successfull(same like the P51).
Imho, low range of the main german fighter, wrong tactic for the 110 from the beginning, tactical instead of strategical bomber tactics, the Radar and the agressivity of the british pilots caused the result of BoB.
Greetings, knegel
