Thread: Battle of Britain remembered

Well done AndyG. Fantastic link and great pics. I used to go to Biggin Hill Airshow each year and they did a scramble once - with I think 8 Spits which was impressive enough. You have to love the Spit (second best set of curves ever put together) but I have a fondness too for the Hurricane. A bit like a series 3 -v- an Evoque maybe.
cheers,
D

The Battle of Britain remains as one of the key battles in history, for several reasons.

1. The obvious one is that it removed the possibility of an invasion of Britain, although it is still debatable whether this could have succeeded, even with air superiority, and perhaps even if it would ever have been attempted (remember there was still overwhelming British naval superiority).

2. It was also the first major battle in history fought entirely in the air.

3. It was also one of the few major battles in history where technology played a major role in victory (mainly radar, but also the Spitfire and Hurricane).

It needs to be remembered however, that in the circumstances of 1940, in such a battle as this, the defender has some major advantages over the aggressor; aircraft range is not a problem for the defender, but is for the aggressor - at this stage the axis powers mostly had to use twin engined fighters for range, that were no match in speed, climb and manoeuvrability to either the Spitfire or Hurricane; Many of the aircrew from British planes shot down were back in the air within days, sometimes the same day. All the aircrew of German planes shot down were either dead or POWs, and this quickly resulted in a shortage of experienced aircrew. You can build a new plane a lot quicker than you can turn a rookie into an experienced pilot.

Although there is continuing discussion comparing the aircraft on both sides, it is pretty clear from the results that by and large, the aircraft were closely matched. It is also clear (for those who try to laud US technology compared to British), that these two countries were well ahead of any others, including the US. This is notwithstanding some really good designs from many other countries, although they almost all remained just that - few saw actual service. Perhaps the only top line military aircraft outside those two countries that had been deployed in significant numbers was the Mitsubishi A6M, which in 1940 was by far the best carrier fighter anywhere (but development lagged compared to e.g. Spitfire - while both started life with around 800hp, the Zero finished the war with little over 1000hp, where Spitfires were using in some cases over 2000hp before the end of the war.

Early in the Battle of Britain, the Italians, giving token support to the Luftwaffe, actually flew some biplane fighters over the UK. I am not sure any returned, but it is an indication of how aircraft compared outside the two mentioned.

John

Interesting read there John. I would loved to have been there, the noise of all those Rolls Royce Merlin engines would have your hair standing on end!!!

jdnsw,...GREAT post,...thank you.
You mentioned Italian Bi-Planes. Do you remember the Gloster Gladiator Bi Planes, "Faith, Hope, & Charity", that were amongst a few Gladiators that were based in Malta during the War, and flew against simply impossible odds.
Every schoolboy in England knew about them when I was growing up.
Pickles.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

jdnsw,...GREAT post,...thank you.
You mentioned Italian Bi-Planes. Do you remember the Gloster Gladiator Bi Planes, "Faith, Hope, & Charity", that were amongst a few Gladiators that were based in Malta during the War, and flew against simply impossible odds.
Every schoolboy in England knew about them when I was growing up.
Pickles.

Yes, I'm familiar with them. The Gladiator and the Fiat CR42 were comparable, although the Gladiator seems to have had the edge, particularly in firepower. In considering some Italian successes early in the war, it should be remembered that many of the Italian pilots had recent combat experience in the Spanish Civil War, whereas few Allied pilots had any combat experience since 1918, and most had only entered the air force in the preceding two or three years. However, this advantage soon disappeared, as pilots of all combatants rapidly gained experience (the survivors, anyway), although there was a continuing stream of replacement pilots who were newly trained.

Roald Dahl's "Going Solo" is a good readable account of the newly trained pilot both gaining experience and going from Gladiator to Spitfire.

John

Speaking of Bi-planes, the poms also had the Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber which flew off aircraft carriers. Slow and cumbersome, but they did the job!!

Originally Posted by Ausfree

Speaking of Bi-planes, the poms also had the Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber wish flew off aircraft carriers. Slow and cumbersome, but they did the job!!

Didn't they fly against the Bismark, & hit her rudder, which eventually led to her demise?
Pickles.

Originally Posted by Pickles2

Didn't they fly against the Bismark, & hit her rudder, which eventually led to her demise?
Pickles.

Yes. The Swordfish was Britain's only torpedo bomber that could operate off a carrier until late in the war. Apart from the Bismark operation, where the aircraft flew off in sea conditions that were supposed to be impossible, their greatest success was in a night attack on Taranto in November 1940, sinking or disabling three battleships and a cruiser (the Japanese naval attache was very interested and inspected the results!). This success, attacking one of the most heavily defended targets in Europe was remarkable.

One, probably apocryphal, reason given for this success was that the predictor sights on the warships and harbour anti-aircraft batteries was that the sights did not have a slow enough setting for the estimated aircraft speed. More likely is that the attack, ignoring barrage balloons, was made at such a low level that anti-aircraft fire was restricted because of the risk of hitting harbour installations and other ships.

They were also used for a variety of other tasks demanding slow landing speed and good handling, especially in anti-submarine operations, including very small carriers and launching of float equipped variants from merchant ships.

John