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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (120746)	11/30/2003 10:36:33 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

It is a simple fact of history that Britain was at no time nearly overwhelmed by German air power. Aircraft production wise, maybe not.. But plane and Pilot wise, yes... Given that the German fighter forces outnumbered the British by 3-1 at the start of the battle of britain, with the same number of pilots to man them, the Germans still had reserves of pilots, despite their losses, whereas the British were running thin and near collapse. Furthermore, the British were required to split their fighter forces, with hurricanes attacking the bombers while their spitfires dealt with the German fighter cover. A number of british pilots were killed attacking these bombers. "The key aerial confrontation between Germany and England came early in the war, during the summer of 1940. At the time, the fighter force of the RAF stood at about six hundred planes, about a third the size of the Luftwaffe." pilotfriend.com But you cite aircraft loss reports from the 1939 Polish campaign to substantiate that assertion?? because the Luftwaffe lost not less than 285 airplanes, with another 279 planes damaged, for a total loss of 333 Polish machines. Did you think I wouldn't review that link? Now here's a link that I came across when researching RAF losses during the BOB.. Seems someone did it for a school project but it has some interesting statistical tables: schoolhistory.co.uk Most notably, pay attention to source G, where it shows that some 339 RAF fighter pilots died (out of a pilot pool likely not much greater than 600-900 pilots), as compared to only 171 German fighter pilots KIA. But even assuming that of the 762 Luftwaffe fighter aircraft lost, that the other some 500 were captured, it still left the Germans with a 1100 to 250 fighter aircraft advantage... Destroy Britain's fighter force and the country would have been at the mercy of the Luftwaffe and the Royal navy would never have dared intervene against a cross channel German invasion of England (Operation Sea Lion). So I really could care less if you agree with me or not. The attritional statistics clearly back up my claim as German fighter air superiority actually increased from 3-1 to over 4-1 over the course of the battle. Had they maintained the pressure on RAF fighter airfields and forces, they would have, in all likelihood, won that battle, and quite possibly the war. And I just discovered this resource as well for the BOB: raf.mod.uk raf.mod.uk Hawk