The Battle of Britain.

[Dunserving]

Didn't think Phylo would need any help. Right too.

Anyone wishing to research more on coastal defences could do far worse than to look at:

http://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?board=44.0
and
http://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?board=46.0

This from Phylo got me thinking:

"...and it was part of the second version of the Sealion plans that the FJ woul sieze Lympne, and it's not impossible that the invasion would give the Germans control of Manston too - so they would be able to fly in LW airfield operating units and base fighters there....just as they leapfrogged fighter units into Norway ASAP only a few months earlier."

Just think about Manston, as compared to Lympne...

It has a lot of advantages despite being just a little further away from France. Larger for a start.
But there is a more serious aspect to it being a very valuable airfield to capture, more valuable than Lympne.
It would be hard to recapture once assaulted by a sufficiently large force of paratroopers. The topography, geology, and local agriculture and roads, all combine to make the site one that could be relatively easily defended against a conventional ground attack. Perhaps its best defence was that it was not on the Ordnance Survey maps produced during the 1940's - though sadly it was on those published in the 1930's! Lympne didn't even have that!

This site will show you that: http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm

And this one will gove some pre-war and wartime photos: http://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/index ... pic=5925.0

Of course, once the area was secure there is also the advantage of an ideal beach landing site within a mile, and once Planet Thanet had been mopped up a harbour as well.

[LWD]

Indeed that was my point. Especially over any signficant duration you simply aren't going to be able to keep more than a third and probably significantly less on CAP and a signficant portion of those not on CAP will not be able to get into the air very quickly

And that penalty affects both sides

Why do the British have to fly CAP? Especially in the first couple of days?

This seems to be assuming that the invasion has already succeeded. It's at it's most vulnerable during the crossing and landing.

Not really - for if the LW is maintaining local air superiority OVER kent and Sussex to allow landings, then Fighter COmmand has to get THAT back before it can get as physically far as the Channel.

If the LW has airbases in Britain and massive amounts of AA then the initial invasion has succeeded. If they are flying CAP over both Kent and Sussex and the invaison beaches then they are awfully spread out and are inviting defeat in detail. How long by the way would it take to fly from say Kent to the invasion beaches?

If the RAF strikes then they still have their radar stations .

The LW knew what radar was, and made frequent attempts to hit radar sies - AND succeeded. they just didn't realise

But if they don't know they succeeded and indeed think they didn't why would they continue? Weren't the radar stations repaired rather quickly? I thought it was mostly the towers that were taken down. Seem to recall the Brit's came up with a mobile radar as well but I'm not sure of the time frame for that one.

The local air superiority requirement before ordering Sealion means that CH/CHL sites along the Kent and Sussex coasts are wide open and vulnerable to being mopped up at leisure.

But the window is narrow and there's a lot for the LW to do. Why would they invest a lot of effort in something that doesn't look all that productive and isn't particularly easy on aircraft?

... Given what the invasion fleet was doing - what it was transporting - there would be a huge amount of light AA...which was what the Germans were relying on.

Looking at the OB at http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=1145 there does seem to be a fair amount of AAA on the list. That still doesn't address the lack of ammo however.

....and in 1940 the RAF doesn't have any low-level shipping attack capacity - EXCEPT the crappy Blenheim IFs! Which is why Coastal started using them...
Which means any other attacks on the invasion force would be by RAF bombers at medium level. And those barge targets are NOT big when they are just individual ships again; Bomber Command was successful against them at night because they were
1/ stationary; and
2/ moored side by side in quantity!

I'll grant you they won't be as concentrated a target. However moving at 3 knots or anchored off shore is hardly moving given the accuarcy of the time as far as bombing goes. Then there's the importance of the limited number of larger ships which are bigger targets. Weren't there FAA planes available as well?

they don't need to. If they can deliver a telling blow to the invasion force the invasion is almost sure to fail.

Yes they do - they have to win back air superiority over the buffer zone between Fighter Command and the invasion force that air supremacy over Kent/Sussex represents...THEN escort bombers through the fighter defences over the invasion force.

I disagree. If they can contest the LW's air superiority then most of the bombers should be able to make it through. Again this was often what happened in the Pacific especially when US planes attacked Japanese CVs. The Japanese fighters tended to get wrapped up in dogfighting the US fighters which resulted in the bombers getting pretty much a free ride. There is the question of whether or not the RAF would have thought this a viable tacktic.

You seem to be argueing against yourself here. I'm not sure exactly what your point is

My point is - they LW on the day of the invasion doesn't need to keep local air superiority over Kent /Sussex OR defend the invasion force; they don;t have to make a choice, they can do both,

And my contention is that they can't. Again for the RAF to get a raid in they don't need air superiority they only need to take it away from the LW for a fairly narrow window.

... There's a thread somewhere on AHF with the crunched numbers - they have something like 320+ for September 1940. A significant part of these would be used as planned, using the FJ to secure Lympne airfield in the early hours and morning of the invasion - and take losses doing it; but once ground forces from the invasion three miles away make it to Lympne, they can be turned over totally to flying in stores. By that stage anyway, as early as the afternoon of T-Tag ( ), the plan was for the Royal Military Canal, the only real line of defence between the coast and Lympne, to be in German hands - seizing it was the other job of the FJ in the area that day.

But how long before the field is out of range of British artillery? It's hard to have a viable airfield when you opposition can shell it at will.

[phylo_roadking]

I used to wonder wby they didn't include Manston in their plans - but

1/ it was an Eleven Group Sector station IIRC - so by the LW's "rules of engagement" THEY would have trashed/cratered it beyond use during Action One - the historical BoB...which IS what happened after all!

2/ Lympne was unoccupied during the bulk of the BoB! Altghough it was an Eleven Group dispersal field...supposedly with stores and ground crew - it was one of a handful of forward dispersal fields that were reckoned on being TOO far forward! So not much attention was paid tio it - the Germans raided it once or twice....but it was SO negelected by Fighter Command that two pilots who landed there in an emergency to refuel and rearm - found there was nothing there to refuel with! No fuel....

3/ The Germans after Norway and Holland had a major aversion to taking airfields; Lympne offered a change from their normal "doctrine" for this - which was a coup de main landing by gliders or paratroops ON the field, with fighter tactical support...which had proved rather expensive and problematical in BOTH Norway and Holland, as it turned out! Lympne offred them a change to land paratroops at a number of locations in the surrounding countryside THEN advance and surround the field before taking it.

Manston, being a Sector field, would have been MUCH better defended for it was a much greater "asset" for the RAF to be allowed to let go of than an unused dispersal field Historically, a few day's shovelling and levelling had it back in action - the advantage of grass strips! - so Eleven group wouldn't have actually pulled out of the station, they just stopped flying sorties out of it.

[Dunserving]

How long by the way would it take to fly from say Kent to the invasion beaches?

Kent is not a geographical spot you fly from. It is a county, an area of south east England that is of the order of 55 miles from east to west, and about 40 miles from north to south.

Quite a bit of the Operation Sealion landing area is in the county of Kent. The westernmost extent of the invasion beaches for the initial landings was in the neighbouring county of Sussex, a distance of 32 miles from the county border with Kent. So, something of the order of six minutes at full throttle to the beach furthest from Kent. Longer if you want to calculate from a place within the county.

To fly from Manston (the furthest east airfield in Kent) to the westernmost landing beach is 70 miles, about the same distance from the nearest Luftwaffe airfield in France. About 14 minutes for a fighter. From Lympne, the westernmost landing beach is 52 miles. About ten minutes for a fighter.

Of course, the time calculations depend on the speed a pilot chooses to fly at - and have been based on flying along the shortest course, a straight line.

[Gooner1]

But how long before the field is out of range of British artillery? It's hard to have a viable airfield when you opposition can shell it at will.

Indeed. There were a couple of 12" Howitzers near Lyminge a few miles away that could dent, literally, Lympne airfield.

Interestingly General Claude Liardet the GOC of 1st London Division in whose area Lympne, Hawkinge and Manston airfields fell was later to become Inspector-General of Aerodrome Defences and then the first Commandant-General of the RAF Regiment.

[Dunserving]

Perhaps you had better come over to Kent and have a good look round Manston.....

Its wartime defences, such as they are, are all pretty much in existence. I reckon the site would be much more easily defended against a ground attack - but against paratroopers dropping suddenly all over it.... I think that could be a very different matter. Stand on the airfield and look at the countryside around and you cannot help but see the difficulties in assaulting the place on the ground.

The sheer size of the place meant it was hard to put out of action - not just that vast runway (and having landed on it in a small plane I can assure you it is immense), there is a massive grass area as well. You could put planes down all over the place. You'd not put it out of action easily.

[phylo_roadking]

Why do the British have to fly CAP? Especially in the first couple of days?

British RDF - the Chain Home net along the coast, and the Chain Home Low "filler" stations interspersed with them - didn't give a 360-degree view It consisted of a fixed masted wire antenna "looking out over basically a wide cone FORWAD of its position - across the Channel and often, astmospherics permitting, deep into France.

Therfore - RAF radar operators could "see" formations over France by radar, and see them coming towards the UK coast by radar - but once they passed OVER the coast, RDF was blind

From the point they crossed the coast, raids and formations were tracked by a network of ground observers - the Royal Obsever Corps. THEY tracked the path of aircraft into, across and out of their own individual areas, and their approximate observed height - and fed the information back to Group. It was GROUP's job to analyse ALL the incoming data and make decisions on what formations were heading where - and task flights and squadrons against them on the basis of anticpating from the supplied information from RDF then ROC. In effect therefore - they were combining data received in real-time from both RDF retruns AND ROC reports to create a "big board" picture of the expected path of each raid.

...after THAT tasking, the actual ground vectoring (minute-on-minute managing to intercept) of RAF fighters was passed out to the SECTOR level; thus the whole workload was cascaded, rather than Group getting tied up doing ALL the work

The problems with this are -

1/ the Germans KNEW what radar was and did; they specifically targeted radar sites. What they didnt realise was how Fighter Command used the data that radar provided But in the event of winning Action One - knowing this isn't important - they would clean up undamaged radar sites by default, just to remove them from the game board

2/ So Fighter Command loses its "depth of field" view out over France and the Channel; the FIRST inkling they have of incoming raids is when ROC posts pick them up entering their zones OVER ENGLAND I.E. the RAF has lost 30-40-50 miles' worth of reaction/decisionmaking time!

3/ HEIGHT was the all-important factor for them; fighters at height ABOVE an incoming enemy formation can dive on an enemy and make up more speed...certainly they can put on speed far faster than an enemy fighter escort can make climbing away from bombers to meet them, and especially i those fighters have been cruising down at the bombers' speed!

4/ Gaining that height takes time. Without it, you're a sitting duck - for an enemy fighter escort THEN is diving ON you, scrubbing off THEIR altitude above you for speed! There are many examples in Bishop - where you can see them all collated side-by side for the first time - where Eleven Group took major casualties because they didn't have that tradeable height advantage - they hadn't got up there quickly enough....

5/ ...and the secret of getting ENOUGH height is - enough early warning. Which the RAF looses along with its radar stations.

And of course -

6/ At the start of Action Two, therefore - if the Germans hit the beaches...their ROC network of OPs on the ground gets thinner and thinner TOO as the Germans roll across country - steamrolling over the top of them

7/ Therefore....in the event of Action Two - the ONLY way that Fighter Command can ever be sure of having that tradeable height advantage is to BE UP THERE ALL THE TIME

Thus...CAP.

How long by the way would it take to fly from say Kent to the invasion beaches?

Not long....the invasion beaches are IN Kent...

There were westerly extensions into Sussex in the first draft of the plans for Sealion - the "wide front" option - but in the second draft this had shrunk back to 95% on the coast of Kent.

Seem to recall the Brit's came up with a mobile radar as well but I'm not sure of the time frame for that one.

I'll need to check, but IIRC they started arriving October-ish.

Weren't the radar stations repaired rather quickly? I thought it was mostly the towers that were taken down

The Chain Home sites consisted of two rows of masts - one steel, one row wooden....with the antennae stretched abck and forth between them. The ground installations were usually just wooden huts on the ground beneath the steel masts....and it was they that were really vulnerable; like all skeleton masts, the steel items were pretty impervious to blast - transparent to it, in effect - and the wooden items could be re-erected overnight; but it was the trained personnel in their wooden huts that were truly at risk.

Weren't the radar stations repaired rather quickly?

There were several large holes knocked in the net IIRC - a three-station hole on Alfred Price's "Hardest Day", and later in the battle a two station hole that took three days to repair...

....bu as radar was only ONE element of data acquisition, Eleven group was able to get by with the ROC ground returns,
and accepting the necessary risks inherent in "late" warning for a short time.

But if they don't know they succeeded and indeed think they didn't why would they continue?

What I meant was - they didn't know to what degree they had robbed Fighter Command of incoming data and how they used it They thought radar JUST provided early warning, end of story...that the guy starting at the screen made the phone call direct to the fighter field So historically when they damaged the radar net to the extent they did - they didn't know the real effects of what they were doing I don't think though that would stop them mopping up radar sites, just to be sure...!

Why would they invest a lot of effort in something that doesn't look all that productive and isn't particularly easy on aircraft?

Because suddenly it IS easy again! With Fighter Command having to operate fron fields 50-60 miles north, and no early warning EXCEPT once over England...the stukas can ome out to play again Especially for coastal targets where they intrude on the ROC ground observer net to an absolute minimum.

Then there's the importance of the limited number of larger ships which are bigger targets. Weren't there FAA planes available as well?

Strangely enough - the Fleet Air Arm's preparations for Sealion are almost transprent nowadays! There were two joint RAF/FAA fields in Ten Group, and a small handful of FAA land-based fighters put under RAF overall command for the BoB - Sea Gladiators etc. - but the sparsity of information on actual anti-invasion preparations by the FAA would make me think they were gathered for the RN breaking through the KM's locking action in the North Sea

I disagree. If they can contest the LW's air superiority then most of the bombers should be able to make it through. Again this was often what happened in the Pacific especially when US planes attacked Japanese CVs. The Japanese fighters tended to get wrapped up in dogfighting the US fighters which resulted in the bombers getting pretty much a free ride.

Yes - in the context of opposing carrier's few dozen aircraft in total. The air battles in Action Two will be many hundreds in the air over Kent and the Channel at any given time...with the LW's bombers providing tactical support for the army down at low level, and quite capable themselves of chopping up war-winning weapons (not) like the RAF's Blenheims...!

There is the question of whether or not the RAF would have thought this a viable tactic

The question facing them is - how many fighters would they anticipate it costing them per day, blocking the LW's fighters like that? Too many - and they fight a short, intense action....and get attrited faster, leaving the skies clear to the LW in the medium term???

They also unfortunately had two competing operational requirements in their standing orders for Sealion - they had to provide fighter escort for Bomber Comand AND the trainers of Operation BANQUET!!!

[phylo_roadking]

Indeed. There were a couple of 12" Howitzers near Lyminge a few miles away that could dent, literally, Lympne airfield

Problem is - on T-Tag ( ) they're going to be pointing the other way and working rather frantically...

...and big shell holes just mean a bigger job for the shovels - except it won't be erks it'll be guys sweating in parachute smocks...UNLESS they do the same as they did at Maleme a year later and make their RAF prisoners do it under the incoming shellfire!!!

[phylo_roadking]

but against paratroopers dropping suddenly all over it.... I think that could be a very different matter. Stand on the airfield and look at the countryside around and you cannot help but see the difficulties in assaulting the place on the ground.

...except this was exactly what the Germans specifically wanted to avoid doing. It's why seizing airfields had been specifically left out of the first draft of the Sealion plans, and Lypmne was only put back in bacause it was SO close to the coast with so few defences in between.

1/ Similar actions in Norway and Holland had been - even the successful ones! - extremely costly, especially to the Ju52 fleet! That's why there were only 320 or so available in September 1940...

2/ The Holland experience had made them paranoid that an unsuccessful or even just partly-successful airfield seizure would land them with a major headache - the "tail would wag the dog" and all the effort of the nearby beachlandings would simply turn into a XXX Corps'-style dash to relieve the FJ marooned far behind enemy lines! A few months earlier, once the Wehrmacht had punctured the blockhouse defences of Fortress Holland...they hadn't been able to start exploiting the break-in properly, they'd had to dash off up the road towards Rotterdam!

Hence Lympne only being permitted because it was so close to the landings AND it offered a chance to modify the airfield seizure tactics significantly.

[LWD]

Had to go back and remind myself exactly what your actions 1 and 2 are. The problem I see is that your action 1 simply doesn't insure LW air superiority. If 11 group had severe enough casualties that Dowding pulled them back it doesn't mean that the LW can hold air superiority over the channel and southern England. Indeed that was the point of pulling them back at that time. That's also why the LW couldn't win. The British could by pulling back the RAF at any time deprive them of the ability to render the RAF ineffective (probably a better term than destroyed which I used initially).

As for filling in holes in the runway caused by artillery. I was thinking the greater problem would be the planes over the soon to be holes. Indeed if you can tell when the planes are landing or taking off you don't even need a direct hit to cause significant problems.

[phylo_roadking]

The problem I see is that your action 1 simply doesn't insure LW air superiority.

Well of course! THIS part of the whole discussion came from the question someone asked about....what IF they did drive Fighter Command back? Historically they didn't - but were damn' close to it. So Action One is the historical BOB's events...plus no turning on London, so Dowding is forced by continued major damage to Eleven Group Sector fields to pull Eleven Group north of London.

What THIS means is that Eleven Group, operating out of its handful (3?) fields NORTH of London but SOUTH of Twelve Group's southern limit have to travel an extra 60-70 miles south or south-east to be over the coast, or even further I.E. LONGER IN TIME TERMS - to be over the Channel. Twelve group have to do the same plus another 20-30 miles...!

Which means as well as loosing its early warning capability - the RAF's fighters NOW have further/longer to travel to reach the Germans...than the Germans have to to protect the invasion force of fly over the Kent coast! This means not only no early warning and less time to gain altitude, but less duration over the battlefield than the LW have now!

In other words - Fighter Command has no combat advantages, and one major disadvantage for Action Two It's only real advantages, as mentioned before, are that Twelve and Ten Group are going into Action Two relatively unattrited.

If 11 group had severe enough casualties that Dowding pulled them back it doesn't mean that the LW can hold air superiority over the channel and southern England. Indeed that was the point of pulling them back at that time.The British could by pulling back the RAF at any time deprive them of the ability to render the RAF ineffective

That's not why Dowding considered pulling Eleven group back; he considered it because Eleven Group's fields were starting suddenly to come under attack by the LW's revised tactics and taking higher casualties AND greater material damage to the fields themselves.

Withdrawing them to proactively save them isn't the same as withdrawing them because they were taking increasing material damage and losses. As the damage Eleven group suffered to its already-batered Sector fields suddenly ramped up again across a four-day period, it was having to maintain a very high sortie rate at the same time as cope with the effects of airfields being closed in the short or medium term.

Indeed if you can tell when the planes are landing or taking off you don't even need a direct hit to cause significant problems.

This is where the Ju52 is really useful - with its STOL performance for short-run landings even when loaded...and its' soft ground capability; if you rememebr the pics of Lympne from the other thread, the field was just a gurt big grassy rectangle with a mowed, maintained flightline across the middle from corner to corner diagonally. Therefore a Ju52 could land or take off off the centreline where a Spitfire would groundloop...and landing under shellfire certainly didn't put off the LW at Maleme in 1941!

[Gooner1]

Perhaps you had better come over to Kent and have a good look round Manston.....

Its wartime defences, such as they are, are all pretty much in existence. I reckon the site would be much more easily defended against a ground attack - but against paratroopers dropping suddenly all over it.... I think that could be a very different matter. Stand on the airfield and look at the countryside around and you cannot help but see the difficulties in assaulting the place on the ground.

Many (most?) of the pillboxes ringing airfields were designed to fire inwards. I'm sure I could look around Manston or Lympne ... and ponder how German paratroopers are supposed to keep a squadron of Matildas at bay.

The sheer size of the place meant it was hard to put out of action - not just that vast runway (and having landed on it in a small plane I can assure you it is immense), there is a massive grass area as well. You could put planes down all over the place. You'd not put it out of action easily.

Yes, I was assuming the artillery would be targeting the planes not the airfield.

[phylo_roadking]

Many (most?) of the pillboxes ringing airfields were designed to fire inwards.

....because the British had learned lessons from Norway and Holland too!

I'm sure I could look around Manston or Lympne ... and ponder how German paratroopers are supposed to keep a squadron of Matildas at bay.

And THIS is one of the reasons I've been trying lately to find out exactly what level of detail Canaris got to the British about Sealion...for how come the British HAD dedicated task forces ready to do exactly that???

Yes, I was assuming the artillery would be targeting the planes not the airfield.

Going to be hard - I don't suppose 12" howitzers have much direct-fire ability against relatively fast moving targets? The other thing is - if you look back at the thread on this - the actual airfield at Lympne is out of sight of guns down on the lowlaying coastline - it's up on the top of a plateau! Going to be blind dropping fire on the airfield at best...

[Gooner1]

Indeed. There were a couple of 12" Howitzers near Lyminge a few miles away that could dent, literally, Lympne airfield

Problem is - on T-Tag ( ) they're going to be pointing the other way and working rather frantically...

Methodically pounding the foreshore of St. Margarets Bay you mean?

...and big shell holes just mean a bigger job for the shovels - except it won't be erks it'll be guys sweating in parachute smocks...UNLESS they do the same as they did at Maleme a year later and make their RAF prisoners do it under the incoming shellfire!!!

Maleme is a good reference - a veritable graveyard of Ju52s and without the firepower available in Kent. Heck even the 3.7" batteries in Dover have the range to hit Lympne.

[phylo_roadking]

Maleme is a good reference - a veritable graveyard of Ju52s and without the firepower available in Kent

The point is they kept doing it - hostile fire or not. And their willingness to land under fire was what turned the campaign on Crete.

Heck even the 3.7" batteries in Dover have the range to hit Lympne.

Like everything else on the Kent shore will be firing out to sea in somewhat of a panic once the dawn reveals the invasion fleet out to sea. And noone will be laying indirect fire on Lympne - not with MILFORCE coming down through the area from the north-west