Alternatives to the Battle of Britain?

[BDV]

An all out Battle Royale between RAF and LW+RA could happen only with very tight strategic cooperation between Axis partners (and chiefly, with German understanding of the enormous benefits of the active Italian partnership).

I have no doubt that the support infrastructure in Brittany was superior to that in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The delay on Italian operations and subsequent debacle in Cyrenaica would be minimal.

Basically, Nazi-Fascist bumbling post-July 1940 allowed Britain the luxury to confront and defeat its foes one at a time (while simultaneously and at the same time neutralizing the French).

[phylo_roadking]

Or you can mine the mouth of the Mersey in addition to bombing the city to destroy facilities. Liverpool was a much more target rich environment than the London docks were and much easier to target relatively in terms of the size of the Merseyside area compared to London.

The problem was that mining was problematical as I noted earlier; by the summer and autumn of 1940 the British had effective countermeasures against magnetic mines, and early in the war had instituted VERY regular sweeps of marked channels etc.. Then there was the issue of accuracy; you'd be resticting LW operations to even fewer nights of operations...and even in perfect conditions there were the issues mentioned previously with mines "sledging" along the sea bottom before coming to rest, often outside swept channels.

Basically - you're talking about a LW campaign predicated on blocking quite narrow channels...channels that the British already knew to and how to keep open every day. Yes there were losses early in the war, and in portions of the Swept War Channel(s) not under observatiuon from the shore - but the British reacted to overnight reports of aircraft operating but NOT bombing by sweeping for mines in the areas concerned. I.E. the Germans had to block certain very defined areas...and all the British had to do was sweep those same narrow, defined areas to keep the arteries of the nation flowing!

Also it should be noted that by night Liverpool wasn't that difficult to find due to the unique shape of the Merseyside area

...once you actually get to the general area, AND in good visibility to be able to follow the land-sea boundary. That was as I noted one of the issues with the longer-range missions - picking up and following the wrong coastline.

by 1941 the British couldn't figure out the pattern of bombing the LW was using because Hitler and Goering ordered target changes so often, so assumed the Germans were just terror bombing randomly.

Actually the British had intercepted and put names to a codenamed list of over a dozen cities for the 1941 campaign, and were able to set up their "beam-bending" aspparatus accordingly; that was the problem at Coventry, where they interpreted that night's raid as London...and were caught out when the bombing beams settle on the East Midlands instead...

[phylo_roadking]

Another factor in a 1941 attack is the introduction of new technology. For instance, the FW 190 was introduced in mid-1941, and it was a long time before the British had a fighter to match it. Perhaps its introduction could have been speeded up a bit to allow its involvement in a spring offensive. Also, it wasn't always necessary to fly out and back - the Fw Condors flew from Brest to Norway one-way. Some German generals such as Halder did think about/advocate a BOB alternative, suggesting a Med strategy involving Spain, Egypt, and Malta

The Italian fighters sent to England could cope with hurricanes but not spitfires. The German fighter pilots would complain about the later strategy of having to stick with the bombers, which slowed them down and denied them the high ground. What if the slower Italian fighters stuck with the bombers to deal with the hurricanes (which were told to attack the bombers, not the fighters) while the German fighters operated normally?

As with 1940, the introduction of the FW 190 in the summer of 1941 was too late to see any benefit from a renewed BoB earlier in the year and lasting longer I'm not sure it could have come into service any sooner; as with many WIs in the What if section, its development was held up by engine issues with the dead-end of the BMW 139 engine holding it back and loosing up to a year or more in re-development. There was also the issue of production volume; could the Germans have produced enough 190 A-2s in the late summer/autumn of 1941 to re-equip enough of the Luftwaffe to give it superiority in a force vs. force confrontation like the BoB...by August 1942, for example, the Luftwaffe "only" could muster some 200 190s over Dieppe - because of course its major air confrontation from 1941 on was in the East. Assembling an RAF-defeating air force in 1941 means abandoniong BARBAROSSA entirely.

, it wasn't always necessary to fly out and back - the Fw Condors flew from Brest to Norway one-way.

Ah, the Condor - cracks knuckles It was NOT a practical bomber for an over-land campaign; under-gunned...and every extra gun added version by version added another crewman, and the weight of the guns, and the ammunition - in a opcakage already under-powered and its re-engining didn't gain back that much performance advantage. Its bombload was small - which was HOW it achieved thus very long ranges; the entire fusealge was filled with extra tankage with the bombs in the engine nacelles! And of course the dedicated maritime recce versions, once its vulnerability as a bomber were shown up, had longer range still...which is how they achieved those great loops out into the Atlantic. The vulnerability was due to a lack of armour, making it very vulnerable to extra AA mounted on merchant vessels.

It was a beautiful aircraft - but weak in construction, weak on defence and defensive guns, and was in effect a flying fuel tank. It was very useful as a maritime bommber for a very short space of time until various countermeasures were adopted/developed, and ONLY because of its unique attack profile - the pilot flew over a ship below diagonally, and a stick of three bombs were dropped...ONE of which was bound to come close enough to a single-skinned rivetted iron plate construction merchant vessel to spring or stave in hull plates. The Condor passed over the target SO quickly and so low that the crew couldn't guarantee which bomb of the three would be close enough, just that one of them would...but made them vulnerable to whatever AA was mounted on the target vessel.

The Italian fighters sent to England could cope with hurricanes but not spitfires. The German fighter pilots would complain about the later strategy of having to stick with the bombers, which slowed them down and denied them the high ground. What if the slower Italian fighters stuck with the bombers to deal with the hurricanes (which were told to attack the bombers, not the fighters) while the German fighters operated normally?

It took a LOT of work in August 1940 to rein in the LW's fighter pilots, who for weeks would STILL nip off on their own at the merest sniff of an RAF fighter The discipline issue was rapidly resolved however by them in effect having to fly escort for OTHER LW fighter pilots I.E. the BF110s! Which means that German fighter pilots prescorting slower Italian fighter pilots would "achieve" the same result. In effect they'd HAVE to be tied by orders to the slower Italian fighters and bombers, or it would just be a case of a group of RAF "demonstrating" against the fighters and drawing them off, allowing a second wing or flight at the Italians.

[phylo_roadking]

There was no military alternative to the BofB.

The BofB was the first stage of an operation aimed at neutralizing Britain. Britain had to be neutralized, there was no alternative. Britain would only be neutralised by occupation or naval supremacy. Occupation and naval supremacy would only come after air supremacy. BofB was all about air supremacy.

The Med option et al was not an option because it might damage Britain and reduce it's capacity, but it wouldn't neutralise Britain.

If the Med option was seen as one stage in a strategic operation to secure Iraq/middle east oil it would have triggered a hostile response definitely from Russia and probably from the USA. The end result would be a very similar imbalance of resources with a very similar outcome in a similar time frame.

Germany had no hope to militarily dominate all of Europe and Russia. I may have had a hope to dominate with a combination of diplomacy and military but there would be no diplomacy change without policy change, and there would be no policy chnage from Hitler in chase of his Destiny.

And in addition to that - that might have been how it was seen in Berlin...but not in London! the UK's POL, especially high octane aviations spirit, was coming from the U.S. and British oil possessions in Central America, not the Middle East!

[Leutnant Von Historian]

Attacking enemy merchant ships (which they did anyway) ,attack the British in the Mediterranean, or simply do what they used to do before attacking enemy civilians: attack the RAF continuously.
Regards

[phylo_roadking]

Attacking enemy merchant ships (which they did anyway)

...when in range, when not escorted/protected - and when they could be found! I.E. not with the concentration needed for an economic blockade;

attack the British in the Mediterranean,

The Germans didn't have a presence on the Mediterranean littoral in the summer of 1940, and Mussolini had said "no thanks" to Hitler helping...

or simply do what they used to do before attacking enemy civilians: attack the RAF continuously.

Well...1/ it wasn't actually "continuous; although the legend is that the summer of 1940 was a summer of nothing but long sunny days...in fact, two thirds of the days inside the official Battle of Britain dates were lost to flying because of the weather! 2/ It took a HUGE effort by the Luftwaffe to close a number of RAF airfields in the last week of August and first days of September...only to have them open again within days, sometimes hours! The longest closed was only three days...

And that was only on one sector of Eleven Group, in an attempt to "open the way" to London; it looks good on papper - but in effect demonstrated that they couldn't at that point apply the level of pressure needed on ALL of Eleven Group to satisfy the Directive No.16 requirement for gaining local air superiority over the invasion beaches.

[RichTO90]

Well...1/ it wasn't actually "continuous; although the legend is that the summer of 1940 was a summer of nothing but long sunny days...in fact, two thirds of the days inside the official Battle of Britain dates were lost to flying because of the weather!

What period of time are you referring to? The "summer" battle from 10 July to 7 September? How did you arrive at the factoid that two-thirds of whatever period you include was "lost to flying because of the weather"?

[phylo_roadking]

How did you arrive at the factoid that two-thirds of whatever period you include was "lost to flying because of the weather"?

By reading it some time ago in Bishop IIRC. The determination wasn't made on the basis of just "whole" days, it was also calculated in part days where there was no flying in the morning or early afternoon for example, but the weather cleared in time for high-intensity operations later in the day. The 10th of August, for example, was the last day for many weeks to come that there were no combat casualties on either side...and scattered cloud, rain and thunderstorms over Northern France and the Channel; on the 11th the weather started good - but deteriorated through the afternoon, although there was a higher intensity of operations than for many days before. On the 9th there had been a morning's operations...but the afternoon saw worsening flying conditions.The 6th had been cloudy with strong winds, the 5th had seen improving weather...but the 3rd and 4th of the month had seen only very scattered operations due to fog and cloud.

The weather lull DID however allow the RAF to replenish; on the 3rd of August, in the middle of the lull in German operations, the number of available Fighter Command aircraft rose from 587 on the 30th of July to 720, the number of aircrew to 1465 from 1200 at the end of July. Which illustrates the "double" point that while bad weather etc. affects the tempo of Luftwaffe operations and the affect on Britain, it also allows the defenders time to replenish losses etc.. Until such a time as the Germans should ever have managed to do something...anything...to majorly affect British aircraft manufacturing, or the air training system at home and abroad - Britain benefitted in two ways; the lack of damage done and the strengthening defence.

The other aspect is that the British had the option of routing vital convoys and shipping via the Northern Approaches rather than the Western - something IIRC they did do in 1941? - taking it even further out of the range of the Luftwaffe's medium bombers' range and greatly reducing the air assets the Germans can devote to an economic blockade by attacking shipping