Great Britain-Royal Air Force

Very nice full set (50 cards) of British cigarette cards depicting “Aircraft Of The Royal Air Force”, issued in 1938.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) came into being in 1918 and was an independent force on an equal footing with the Royal Navy and the army. Its civilian head was the secretary of state for air, who presided over the Air Council. The top uniformed officer was the chief of the air staff. Until May 1940, there was also, on the Air Council, an air member for development and production, but this position was obviated by the creation of a separate Ministry of Air Production. In 1941, this ministry was reintegrated into the Air Council and was headed by the controller of research and development.

Operationally, the wartime RAF was divided into Bomber Command, Fighter Command, Coastal Command, Reserve Command, and Training Command. Training Command subsequently absorbed Reserve Command but was itself divided into Flying Training Command and Technical Training Command. Before the war ended, more commands were added: Army Co-Operation Command, Balloon Command, Maintenance Command, and Ferry Command (responsible for delivering aircraft from factories to combat units). In practice, Coastal Command was under the control of the Admiralty, and Fighter Command assumed control of all homeland air defense, including antiaircraft artillery. Each RAF command was organized into groups, which were in turn divided into squadrons. Fighter groups also featured a “fighter wing,” which was intermediated between the group and squadron level.

Bomber Command
True strategic bombing targets cities, but does so mainly to destroy industrial production and transportation networks, then only secondarily to terrorize the civilian population and undermine a nation’s will to continue to fight the war. Strategic bombing is a form of economic warfare, which directly attacks war production and other industrial and transportation enterprises. Among British as well as American air officers were many who believed that a large-scale program of strategic bombing could create a devastating and therefore decisive economic effect, including, ultimately, the complete destruction of the enemy’s war economy. Despite significant political resistance in Britain and the United States during the 1930s, advocates of strategic bombing managed to persuade their governments to fund the design and construction of heavy four-engine bombers (including, in Britain, the Wellington, Whitley, and Hampden; and in the United States, the B-17, B-24, and B-29), which were the necessary platforms from which heavy, long-range bombing could be executed.

The British conducted strategic bombing under cover of night. This had the advantage of making the bombers difficult to intercept with fighters or to hit with ground-based antiaircraft artillery. Early in the war, long-range fighters were unavailable to escort the bombers deep into enemy territory; this made the bombers especially vulnerable. Yet night bombing had the distinct disadvantage of rendering targets all but invisible; precision bombing was therefore out of the question; therefore, the British employed carpet- bombing (also called area-bombing) techniques. Instead of targeting particular industrial plants or transportation hubs, for example, the British would bomb an entire urban area, hoping to hit valuable industrial targets in the process. This was a highly destructive approach, but there was no guarantee that a raid would hit anything of real strategic value.

Fighter Command’s Finest Hour
After initial skirmishes over the Channel during July and early August, the battle of Britain began officially for the Luftwaffe on Adlertag (“Eagle Day”), or August 13, 1940, which commenced the protracted Operation ADLERANGRIFF (“Eagle Attack”). Although the fight in the sky was extremely dramatic at the time and in later recollection, at no point was the RAF on the verge of defeat. It lost many aircraft and good men in fighting over the south, but it was able to replace both without drawing down its main reserves by depleting the defense of the north of Britain. The fundamental problem for the Germans was a basic failure to understand that air warfare by its nature was attritional and therefore, that the RAF could not be eliminated in a single “decisive battle.” The Luftwaffe was also ill-equipped for the mission, with slow medium bombers with inadequate bomb loads and fighters escorts of still more limited range. That was true even though it had tried to develop a strategic bombing capacity before the war and had a significant lead in long-distance navigation and other blind-bombing aids.

There were several keys to the outcome. The RAF fighter force was larger than the Luftwaffe realized when the fight began, despite heavy losses over France and the Low Countries in May and June. Also, Britain was able to significantly outproduce Germany in fighter aircraft throughout the campaign: Luftwaffe intelligence calculated a fighter replacement rate of 180-300 per month, whereas the RAF actually achieved a rate of nearly 500 per month. The Wehrmacht held back resources from German fighter production, which underachieved its goal by 40 percent in the summer of 1940. The RAF thus readily replaced its aircraft losses where the Luftwaffe did not. Similar erroneous estimates of RAF losses marked incompetent Luftwaffe intelligence reports throughout the battle. Also, the fight took place over Britain. That meant the RAF recovered many downed pilots but the Luftwaffe lost aircraft and crews: nearly 1,400 aircraft all told and many crews killed, taken prisoner, or lost in the Channel. British training schemes were already operating at full tilt, whereas the Luftwaffe’s were not. The RAF therefore did not have to draw down main reserves from the center and north of the country without also replacing those more idle squadrons with fresh aircraft and pilots. Fighter Command was further aided by a series of bad decisions born of sheer Nazi arrogance and the erratic decision-making system in Germany. The most fateful of these was Hitler’s choice-provoked by rage over two small British raids against Berlin-to switch bomber targeting from RAF airfields to attacks on British cities. That caused many civilian deaths but allowed the RAF to continue to attrit German bombers and fighters alike. The fundamental reason for the German defeat was the fact that the Luftwaffe was asked to improvise a strategic air campaign for which it did not have the right planes or doctrine, against sophisticated British air and ground defenses in preparation over several years. Finally, the Luftwaffe had no precedent, let alone direct experience, in attacking an enemy that waited behind a comprehensive early warning radar system and had an excellent command-and-control radio net with which to direct fighter air defenses.

Coastal Command
From 1936 RAF Coastal Area operations were elevated to a full Coastal Command. The Royal Navy and RAF thereafter cooperated in coast watch, shipping defense, and anti-submarine warfare around Britain’s coasts and over the North Sea. In 1941 the Admiralty was given operational control of the aircraft of RAF Coastal Command, although its assets remained listed under the RAF order of battle. Through late 1940 the anti-submarine element of Coastal Command was limited by lack of “Sunderland” or other reconnaissance aircraft, and by a more urgent need to fl y invasion-watch missions. During 1941 longer-range aircraft were added, and anti-submarine reconnaissance was emphasized. There followed a growing role for older bombers in hunting and killing U-boats, as new four-engine heavy bomber types began to leave British factories and deploy over the continent. This led to serious interservice arguments: RAF Bomber Command’s Arthur Harris did not want heavy bombers used for defensive purposes. It required direct intervention by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August 1942, to guarantee that the Royal Navy got the long-range reconnaissance aircraft and bombers it needed for its vital battle at sea.

Tactical Air Force
RAF units supported British and Allied ground and naval forces in all theaters in Africa and Europe. The Regia Aeronautica was blasted from the skies of East Africa by the RAF by the end of 1941. The Western Desert Air Force then established theater superiority over the Italian and German air forces in North Africa. Waves of RAF fighters strafed enemy ground forces by day, while tactical bombers struck troop and armor concentrations and supply points at night. Long-range indirection was carried out against deep rear targets such as supply depots and rail lines. Total victory was achieved early in 1943. Meanwhile, fighter defense of Malta survived heavy Axis assault to inflict devastating bomber losses on the Luftwaffe and catastrophic losses on all asset classes of the Regia Aeronautica. The campaign continued to Sicily and Italy in the second half of 1943. The RAF became highly tactically innovative as it applied lessons from North Africa that carried over to the fight in Italy, then France and Germany in 1944-1945. For instance, close support of ground forces was reduced in favor of winning the air battle at some remove; overall operations were directed from a single headquarters; actionable intelligence was closely integrated into air operations; and sophisticated control and communications systems were established between air and ground forces based on mobile radio transmitters carried in trucks that accompanied the troops and armor. Above all, as Richard Overy has noted, the RAF came to understand that maintaining air superiority meant continuous and unrelenting pursuit of the enemy. From these interservice lessons, and given its multinational cast, the RAF was able to fairly smoothly work out inter-Allied relations as larger American forces arrived in the ETO.

The RAF was supplemented by the Royal Auxiliary Air Force and the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. Also, the air forces of the dominions, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa, were incorporated into the RAF, as were elements of the air forces of nations that had been invaded and occupied by the Germans: Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Norway, and Poland. Although these elements were absorbed into the RAF, they were often permitted to retain their unique identity by forming into national legions or squadrons. Women also played a role in the RAF through the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and Princess Mary’s RAF Nursing Service. The RAF drew many of its ground personnel, especially radar operators, plotters, and radio communications monitors, from the WAAF.

Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA)
A British volunteer aviation unit comprised mainly of civilian pilots. For reasons of age, gender, or health-there were several one-armed or one-eyed ATA pilots-these pilots were not draftable into active duty with the RAF. Although the ATA was administered and clerked by British Airways civilians, it was nonetheless put under command of the RAF, and its pilots were issued an RAF-style uniform. As military pilots were pulled from RAF ferry duties into combat, the ATA took up the load of flying urgent supplies within Britain, then the still more urgent business of ferrying aircraft from factories and storage facilities to forward air bases. ATA tasks included long-haul ferries of Lend-Lease aircraft manufactured in the United States and flown to the southern UK via Newfoundland, Iceland, and Scotland. Despite early RAF resistance to allowing women pilots into the ATA, a group of eight women began ferrying single-engine Tiger Moth trainers as early as November 1939-wartime necessity proved a partial gender equalizer. By the end of the war, 166 women pilots served in the ATA. They ferried all types of RAF aircraft during the war, including several Meteor jets. Twelve women qualified to fly four-engine heavy bombers, while 82 were certified on various medium bombers. Other women served as ATA grounds crew or mechanics. ATA male pilots ferried combat aircraft directly to bases in France from mid-1944. They were joined in that duty by female pilots from September. Civilian pilots of the ATA- representing 30 Allied nationalities-ferried 300,000 military aircraft by the end of the war.

The British army, navy, and air force all drew on conscription for personnel. However, all RAF aircrews were volunteers, many of them trained through the British Empire Air Training Scheme, in which the dominions participated extensively. Indeed, the time-consuming training of aircrews, especially pilots, was the chief factor limiting the effectiveness of the RAF-a far more limiting factor than aircraft production.

The RAF numbered 193,000 men at the outbreak of war in September 1939 and peaked at 992,000 in September 1944. The WAAF had 17,400 women in September 1940 and peaked at 180,300 in September 1943. RAF losses included 69,606 killed, 6,736 missing, 22,839 wounded, and 13,115 taken as prisoners of war.

List of Second World War Victoria Cross recipients

List of Victoria Cross recipients of the Royal Air Force

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN – Strategic Thinking

Serious German aircraft losses from the spring campaign greatly weakened the Luftwaffe before the Battle of Britain. Had that been the only disadvantage under which the Luftwaffe operated, German strategic problems would have been daunting enough, given the difficulties of mounting a major combined arms operation. Unfortunately for the Germans, the strain that recent battles had imposed on their military structure represented only a small portion of the problem; a whole host of strategic, economic, tactical, and technological problems had to be faced and surmounted before the Reich could solve the “British question.”

What made an inherently complex task impossible was the overconfidence that marked the German leadership in the summer of 1940. Hitler, basking in a mood of preening self-adulation, went on vacation. During a visit to Paris after the signing of the armistice, tours of World War I battlefields, and picnics along the Rhine, the last thing on Hitler’s mind was grand strategy.” The high command structure, however, was such that without Hitler there was no one with either the drive or strategic vision to pick up the reins-a state of affairs precisely in accord with the Fuhrer’s wishes.

Until mid-July 1940, Hitler believed that England would sue for a peace that he would have happily extended to her. As early as May 20, Hitler had remarked that England could have peace for the asking. Nothing in British behavior in the late 1930’s suggested that Hitler’s expectation was unrealistic. In fact, there were still some within the British government who regarded Churchill’s intransigence with distaste. In late May, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, expressed his alarm at the relish with which Churchill approached his task, while “Rab” Butler, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, told the Swedish minister in London that “no opportunity would be neglected for concluding a compromise peace if the chance [were] offered on reasonable conditions .”

But the mood in Britain had changed. Churchill, furious at Butler’s indiscretion, passed along a biting note to Halifax. Butler’s whining reply that he had been misunderstood and had meant no offense indicates how much things had changed since Churchill had assumed power.” But one must stress that Churchill’s toughness as the nation’s leader reflected a new mood in Britain. In late June 1940, Admiral Dudley Pound told the French liaison officer at the Admiralty that “the one object we had in view was winning the war and that it was as essential for them [the French] as for us that we should do so. . . . All trivialities, such as questions of friendship and hurting people’s feeling, must be swept aside.” Indeed they were, when for strategic reasons, the British government ordered the Royal Navy to attack and sink the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir.

The Germans missed the new British resolve almost completely, and Hitler’s strategic policy from the summer of 1940 through 1941 sought a method, whether it be military, diplomatic, or political, to persuade the British to make peace. The mood in Berlin was euphoric, since the Germans believed that the war was nearly over. All that remained, from their viewpoint, was to find the right formula for ending hostilities. Confirming this perspective was a strategic memorandum of late June in which Alfred Jodl, the number two man in the OKW, suggested that “the final victory of Germany over England is only a question of time.’ Jodl’s approach to the English “problem” reflected a general failing within the officer corps of all three services. As the campaign in the west in 1940 had shown, the tactical and operational performance of German military forces was without equal. The problem lay on a higher level: that of strategy. The Germans, if they had mastered the tactical and operational lessons of World War I, had not mastered the strategic lessons of that terrible conflict. While the French failure to learn from the last war had immediate consequences in May 1940, in the long run German unwillingness to face that war’s strategic lessons had an even more catastrophic impact on their history.

German strategic planning and discussions throughout the summer of 1940 reflect, in glaring fashion, a failure to grasp the essentials of strategy. The navy had squandered its battle cruiser assets in strategically meaningless operations off Norway in the late spring. The army drew up a plan for the proposed cross-channel invasion, code named “Sea Lion,” that one can charitably describe as irrelevant to and ignorant of the general state of available naval strength . The Luftwaffe throughout the summer, following Goring’s lead, paid minimal attention to the operational problems of a channel crossing by the army in the belief that its victory over the RAF would make an invasion unnecessary.
Jodl’s June memorandum posed two possibilities for German strategy against England: (a) “a direct attack on the English motherland; (b) an extension of the war to peripheral areas” such as the Mediterranean and trade routes. In the case of a direct strategy, there existed three avenues: (1) an offensive by air and sea against British shipping combined with air attacks against centers of industry; (2) terror attacks by air against population centers; and (3) finally, a landing operation aimed at occupying England. The precondition for German success, Jodl argued, must be the attainment of air superiority. Furthermore, attacks on British aircraft plants would insure that the RAF would not recover from its defeat. Interestingly, Jodl suggested that air superiority would lead to a diminishing capacity for the RAF bomber force to attack Germany. It is in this context that German attacks in the coming struggle on Bomber Command’s bases must be seen. By extending the air offensive to interdict imports and to the use of terror attacks against the British population (justified as reprisal attacks), Jodl believed that the Luftwaffe would break British willpower. He commented that German strategy would require a landing on the British coast only as the final blow (“Todesstoss”) to finish off an England that the Luftwaffe and navy had already defeated.

On June 30, 1940, Goring signed an operational directive for the air war against England. After redeployment of its units, the Luftwaffe would first attack the RAF, its ground support echelons, and its aircraft industry. Success of these attacks would create the conditions necessary for an assault on British imports and supplies, while at the same time protecting German industry. “As long as the enemy air force is not destroyed, it is the basic principle of the conduct of air war to attack the enemy air units at every possible favorable opportunity-by day and night, in the air, and on the ground-without regard for other missions.” What is apparent in early Luftwaffe studies is the fact that the German air force regarded the whole RAF as the opponent rather than just Fighter Command. Thus, the attacks on Bomber Command bases and other RAF installations partially reflected an effort to destroy the entire British air force rather than bad intelligence. Parenthetically, the losses in France directly influenced Goring’s thinking. He demanded that the Luftwaffe maintain its fighting strength as much as possible and not allow its personnel and materiel to be diminished because of overcommitments.

In retrospect, the task facing the Germans in the summer of 1940 was beyond their capabilities. Even disregarding the gaps in interservice cooperation-a must in any combined operations-the force structure, training, and doctrine of the three services were not capable of solving the problem of invading the British Isles. The Norwegian campaign had virtually eliminated the Kriegsmarine as a viable naval force. Thus, there were neither heavy units nor light craft available to protect amphibious forces crossing the Channel. The lack of escorting forces would have made “Sea Lion” particularly hazardous because it meant that the Germans possessed no support against British destroyer attacks coming up or down the Channel. The Admiralty had stationed 4 destroyer flotillas (approximately 36 destroyers) in the immediate vicinity of the threatened invasion area, and additional forces of cruisers, destroyers, and battleships were available from the Home Fleet.” Even with air superiority, it is doubtful whether the Luftwaffe could have prevented some British destroyers from getting in among the amphibious forces; the Navy certainly could not. The landing craft that circumstances forced the Germans to choose, Rhine River barges, indicates the haphazard nature of the undertaking as well as the tenuous links to supplies and reinforcements that the Germans would have had across the Channel. Just a few British destroyers among the slow moving transport vessels would have caused havoc.

Air superiority itself represented a most difficult task, given Luftwaffe strength and aircraft capabilities. Somewhat ironically, the strategic problem confronting the Germans in the summer of 1940 represented in microcosm that facing Allied air forces in 1943. Because of the Bf 109’s limited range, German bombers could only strike southern England where fighter protection could hold the loss rate down to acceptable levels. This state of affairs allowed the RAF a substantial portion of the country as a sanctuary where it could establish and control an air reserve and where British industrial power, particularly in the Birmingham-Liverpool area, could maintain production largely undisturbed. Moreover, the limited range of German fighter cover allowed the British one option that they never had to exercise: Should the pressure on Fighter Command become too great, they could withdraw their fighters north of London to refit and reorganize; then when the Germans launched “Sea Lion,” they could resume the struggle. Thus in the final analysis, the Luftwaffe could only impose on Fighter Command a rate of attrition that its commanders would accept. The Germans were never in a position to attack the RAF over the full length and breadth of its domain. Similarly in 1943, Allied fighters could only grapple with the Germans up to a line approximately along the Rhine. On the other side of the line, the Luftwaffe could impose an unacceptable loss rate on Allied bombers. Not until Allied fighters could range over the entire length and breadth of Nazi Germany could Allied air forces win air superiority over the continent.

LINK

An analysis of late propeller era combat aircraft

Back in the early 30's bombers were still crude: The were meant to take off, cruise, drop bombs, cruise possibly fend of fighter with machine guns and land. This was quite the same approach as in the First World War. In fact, night bombing (which happened to small extent in WW1) was included, but not exactly popular due to poor accuracy. This dominant bomber concept was so crude that Ju 52/3m passenger aircraft were adaptable as auxiliary bombers.

This primitive model of a bomber was shaken in the 30's by two new concepts; the dive bomber (for better accuracy of bomb drops; notably the Ju 87) and the fast bomber (for avoiding fighters; notably the early Blenheim, early Do 17 and SB-2).

Tupolev SB-2. Skin by Karel Chvojka, 3dz by Captain Kurt mod. by Karel C.

The machine gun defence proved to be unsatisfactory. It was difficult to add more defensive machine guns, while fighters increased their weaponry from two to up to eight machine guns. Armour plating, armoured windshields and self-sealing fuel tanks plus the increasing strength of airframes reduced the effectiveness of normal machine guns. Fighters were able to cope by adding 20 mm autocannons, while the same calibre was very unwieldy in movable installations for bomber defences.

Bombers needed better survivability than armour and machine guns could afford. Four approaches promised relief; flying higher, flying faster, flying in darkness and flying with escort fighters.

To fly higher was no good solution (for bombers) because of the inherent accident and reliability issues (due to freezing temperature), added aircraft cost, low payload and poor accuracy of bombing runs.

To fly faster was a questionable solution (for bombers) because it was a time of rapid improvements of top speeds in aviation. A bomber prototype could easily fly faster than all contemporary fighters and still find itself to be much slower than hostile fighters during a war only a few years later. The Mosquito was later on successful with this approach, but only so because it faced opposing forces that were limited in their performance (especially at high altitude) in part by an inferior raw materials base. Propeller aircraft were also bound to meet the limit of their potential at about 800 km/h, and without the introduction of turbine engines we'd have seen an air war scenario in which almost all aircraft would have had a very similar top speed again (as they had already in WW1).

To fly in darkness meant high training and avionics costs, a high accident rate and a typically poor accuracy.

To fly with escort fighters proved to be most successful, but that wasn't about bomber design itself.

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Reconnaissance aircraft of the late 30's looked still a lot like First World War reconnaissance aircraft, but they had badly fallen behind fighters in both cruise and top speed. The Hs 126 is a typical example. The poor survivability of such recce aircraft called for new approaches.

One approach was to fly higher - this proved less problematic for (photo) reconnaissance than for bombing, and the Ju 86P was one of the extreme examples.

Another approach was to fly faster, and this worked for recce better than for bombing simply because air forces needed fewer recce aircraft and the fast fighters could be adapted to photo reconnaissance. The Spitfire PR versions are a good example, also the F-4/-5/-6 U.S.A.A.F. aircraft and the Bf 109 and Fw 190 with recce kit (a specific "Rüstsatz"; mission module). There were also successful two-engined reconnaissance aircraft and even some dedicated fast photo recce aircraft.

The highly successful Japanese Mitsubishi Ki-46 III high speed photo reconnaissance aircraft

To fly in darkness proved to be a niche escape, for both illumination/flash bombs and infrared photography were apparently not fully satisfactory.

To fly with escort fighters - a typical WW1 approach - was unsuccessful because it was both uneconomical and because the ground control for interceptors enabled the defenders to face such a recce package with altitude and numerical superiority just about every time. This in combination with the fact that a single recce aircraft suffices to make photos while a single bomber doesn't suffice to bomb a target properly defined the recce aircraft as unique. They were usually alone on their missions. This influenced which survivability strategies did work and which didn't.

A unique alternative for battlefield recce aircraft was to fly too slow. Fighter had advanced in top speed at the cost of aerodynamics that led to a high stall speed. The Fi 156 was very successful as a short range battlefield reconnaissance aircraft in part because even fighter aces had difficulties to get a Fi 156 into their crosshairs if they managed to do it at all. It was just too damn slow and agile. The same effect was observed in trial mock dogfights against Fl 282 helicopters. Very slow recce aircraft were only suitable for very short range aerial recce and very vulnerable to anti-air weapons, though.

The next analysis is about fighters. There were basically two directions for fighter philosophies in the 30's; the manoeuvrability school (Italians, Japanese, Czechs) that emphasised dogfights and even aerobatics (overall a similar philosophy as in WW1 air combat) and the high speed school (Germany) that emphasised a superior speed. The Russians initially followed both schools with their I-16 (fast monoplane) and I-153 (more agile biplane).

The high speed school was typically combined with low drag liquid cooled engines that were less powerful than radial engines (during the 30's) and did thus initially lack a superiority in climb rate over the more agile fighter designs. Liquid-cooled engines caught up with radials when radials grew to the limits of single radials (the solution was the double radial engine, but that brought cooling issues) at the end of the 30's. By 1939/1940, both liquid and air cooled engines were at about 1,000 to 1,300 hp. By this time liquid cooled engine-driven fighters had caught up with comparable radial-driven fighters in climb rate.

The whole competition changed during WW2. The high manoeuvrability school lost out in Europe; faster fighters were dominant because they chose when to fight and only they were able to cope with fast bombers. The Japanese stuck to the manoeuvrability school with few exceptions, Italy did too (and failed for several reasons) and the British did at least keep a better manoeuvrability than Bf 109 fighters.

The new conflict was different than the 1930's conflict between fighter philosophy schools: All fighters had to have a similar top speed to be competitive, but they proved to have different manoeuvrability strengths.

The vertical air combat manoeuvrability school emphasized climbing and diving and in some cases also a high roll rate. The horizontal air combat manoeuvrability school emphasized tight turns and a low stall speed. The vertical school won, as evidenced by the Fw 190's success over Spitfires and the 1943-1945 success of U.S. fighters against most Japanese fighters. The reason was simple; the vertical school was again dominant, for it was the key to offensive manoeuvres. The horizontal manoeuvring was only at its premium in defensive manoeuvring and at very low altitudes.

Vertical air combat manoeuvre example: A Bf 109 expert vs. defensive fighter ring

To fly tight turns was mostly about shaking off a pursuing fighter (and had little chance of success if employed offensively), while climbing and diving was mostly about attacking a fighter (often with the deadly advantage of surprise). Defence may be stronger than offence most of the time, but offence is decisive. The vertical air combat manoeuvrability school was furthermore still potent in numerical inferiority situations.

Another division between fighters was between fighters for high altitude and for low altitude. Eastern Front and Pacific air wars were mostly about low altitudes, while Western European air combat was mostly about high altitudes. There was a spiral for ever greater practical flight ceilings whenever high altitude combat became dominant in a theatre. The Allies won this race in 1942-1944 thanks to the British lead in two-stage superchargers and the American ability to supply the necessary heat-resistant alloys for turbochargers. The Germans trailed in both regards, but jumped far ahead in 1944 with turbojet engines (even though they lacked heat-resistant alloys and had a very short lifespan, poor reliability and handling characteristics).

It's also possible to divide between short range and long range fighters; long range was important for escort fighters and over the vast expanses of the Pacific theatre, while short range was sufficient for interceptors and fighters supporting ground warfare.

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The post-WW2 period saw competing philosophies for fighters as well:

# Short range ("WVR") vs long range ("BVR") air combat

# Short range fighters vs. long range fighters

# high performance vs. huge numbers

# pursuit of superior speed and altitude performance after the first Mach 2 generation (mostly MiG-25, later F-22)

# low visibility to sensors ("stealth") vs. much external hardware

# avionics with finesse vs. brute power avionics (example for the latter: MiG-25 radar)

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It's interesting stuff (to me), but I'm not so sure about the lessons.

Aircraft kept becoming more capable, more refined, more oriented at their purpose.

There's an eternal development for better survivability.

Superior offensive qualities tend to dominate over the superior defensive qualities in air combat.

Sven  Ortmann of Defense-and-Freedom Blog

Battle of Britain-Main Fighters

Messerschmitt 109.

The Messerschmitt 109 first flew in October 1935, powered by British Rolls- Royce Kestrel engines. The aircraft entered Luftwaffe service in spring 1937 and received its baptism of fire in the Spanish civil war. By the beginning of World War II, the aircraft existed in a number of variants, and 1,000 were deployed against Poland in September 1939. The 109 was superior to most other fighters at the outbreak of the war but was fairly evenly matched with the British Spitfire and Hurricane in the Battle of Britain. It did have one very significant advantage over these rivals, however. Its fuel injection system allowed for a constant fuel flow even in negative-g conditions, which meant that a pilot could dive or shear away much more quickly than his opponents. This added significantly to the plane's survivability. Counterbalancing this advantage, however, was the 109's limited range-a 300-mile operating radius for the 109G. This gave the fighter precious little combat time over relatively remote targets such as those in England. 

Some 109 variants had a cannon placed in the hollowed-out nose cap. In early models, this created an unacceptable level of vibration, which, however, was eliminated in later versions. Additionally, most of the fighters were fitted with two wing-mounted cannons and two machine guns mounted on the top of the nose cone that were synchronized to fire through the propeller arc. The 109G, introduced in 1942, was powered by a Daimler- Benz DB605 1,475-horsepower engine to a top speed of 387 miles per hour at 23,000 feet. Wingspan was 32 feet 6 ½ inches. The backbone of the Luftwaffe, some 30,000 109s were built before the end of the war.

Hawker Hurricane 1.

Although less celebrated than the Supermarine Spitfighter, the Hawker Hurricane, not the Spitfire, was responsible for 80 percent of the German aircraft shot down in the Battle of Britain. Designed in 1935, the Hurricane was introduced into RAF service in 1937. At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, the RAF had 32 squadrons of Hurricanes versus only 19 squadrons equipped with Spitfires. Less agile than the Spitfire and slower than Germany's premier fighter, the Messerschmidt Bf109, the Hurricane was deployed against German bomber formations, whereas the Spitfires were used against German fighters. 

At the start of the war, the RAF had 497 Hurricanes. Before the end of the war, the Hawker company delivered 10,030, the Gloster company 2,750, and the Canadian Car and Foundry Company 1,451. Powered by a single 1,030-horsepower Rolls-Royce Merlin III 12-cylinder engine, the Hurricane had a wingspan of 40 feet and a top speed of 328 miles per hour at 20,000 feet. It was armed with eight wing-mounted .303-inch Browning machine guns.

Supermarine Spitfire.

Introduced in 1938 and produced in some 40 variants, the Supermarine Spitfire became the single most celebrated fighter aircraft of World War II. Driven by a Merlin Mk III engine making 1,030 horsepower, the version that first entered service had a top speed of about 360 miles per hour and was armed with eight .303-inch machine guns. The Spitfire XIV, introduced in 1944, had a ceiling of 40,000 feet and a top speed of 440 miles per hour and was responsible for shooting down more than 300 German V-1 buzz bombs. The XIV version and several earlier versions as well also had increased armament: two 20-millimeter cannon were added either to the four .303-inch machine guns or to two .50-inch machine guns. Some versions also carried one 250- or 500-pound bomb under the fuselage and one 250-pound bomb under each wing. The Spitfire survived the end of the war and was used by the RAF for photoreconnaissance until 1954. Wingspan for all versions was 36 feet. 

An aesthetically beautiful aircraft, the Spitfire incorporated a light-alloy monocoque fuselage and a single-spar wing with stressed-skin covering and fabric-covered control surfaces. The aircraft proved highly maneuverable and was more than a match for the best German fighters during the Battle of Britain, where it earned its first and most enduring glory. Some 20,334 Spitfires (all versions) were produced during the war, and a naval variant, the Sea fire, was produced in a quantity of 2,556.

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Following the fall of France in the Battle of France, Adolf Hitler contemplated launching Operation Sealion, the cross-channel invasion of England. Encouraged by the claims of Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, Hitler believed that bombing raids on principal English cities and industries would, at the very least, prepare the way for the invasion and, even more important, might well render the invasion unnecessary by bringing Britain to its knees. 

At Hitler's disposal were the forces of the Luftwaffe now based on French and Belgian airfields. The available forces amounted to approximately 2,679 aircraft, including 1,015 medium bombers, 350 Stuka dive bombers, 930 fighters, and 375 heavy fighters. These included some of the most advanced aircraft of the war at this time. To oppose these forces, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) could muster no more than about 600 Hurricane and Spitfire fighters. Outnumbered as they were, these were excellent planes, and they were manned by superbly trained, highly skilled, and extraordinarily motivated pilots under the command of the venerable Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding. 

The battle, the first in history fought entirely in the air, unfolded in three successive, albeit overlapping, phases, beginning on July 10, 1940, with a heavy German air raid. This signaled the start of the battle's first phase, which was directed at destroying the southern ports from Dover west to Plymouth. This area was the most likely site for invasion landings, and Hitler sought to neutralize its defenses. Almost every day, German medium bombers, escorted by fighters, crossed the English Channel and bombed ships as well as port installations. On August 15, the first phase of the battle reached its point of greatest intensity when approximately 940 German aircraft attacked in the south as well as in the north. The RAF managed to shoot down 76 of the German planes, losing 34 fighters in the exchange. The Germans also destroyed 21 British bombers on the ground. 

Overlapping the first offensive phase was the second, which targeted airfields, aircraft factories, and radar installations. The objective was to achieve air supremacy by attacking Britain's airfields (and the aircraft there) and aircraft production as well as its highly advanced radar capability. In the space of two weeks, from August 24 to September 6, the Luftwaffe destroyed or severely damaged 466 Hurricane and Spitfire aircraft; 103 British pilots were killed and 128 wounded, representing a quarter of the RAF's entire fighter pilot strength. Yet the cost to the attackers was so heavy as to be a pyrrhic victory. The Germans lost more than twice the number of planes the British lost and more than twice the number of pilots. Worse, Hitler directed his bombers to cease their attacks on RAF facilities and aircraft factories and, beginning on September 7, to bomb civilian targets. The first objective was the air defenses of London, which was raided by some 300 German airplanes in a daylight mission. On September 15, more than 400 bombers attacked the British capital in what would be the largest daylight raid on London, with 56 of the bombers downed by RAF fighters or ground-based antiaircraft fire. 

Göring was badly shaken by his losses on September 15 and concluded that daylight raids were too costly. This led to the opening of the third and final phase of the Battle of Britain, the exclusive concentration on night bombing. Historians generally identify September 7 as the beginning of the Blitz. For its first week, the Blitz included daylight and nighttime raids, but from September 16 on, only night raids were carried out. The Blitz portion of the Battle of Britain proceeded continuously, without intermission, for 57 nights. On average each night, 200 bombers dropped both incendiary and high-explosive ordnance on London. The worst night was that of October 15, when 480 bombers dropped 386 tons of high explosive and 70,000 incendiary bombs on the city. They were met by six squadrons of British night fighters and the massed fire of some 2,000 antiaircraft guns. 

There is no question that the 57-night Blitz was devastating. More than 43,000 British civilians were killed, and some 200,000 were wounded. Property damage was staggering; ultimately, about 20 percent of London was destroyed. Food production was diminished, but no major food crisis was created. Nevertheless, the Blitz was futile. Hitler had made a disastrous and unrecoverable mistake in diverting the raids from the RAF facilities and factories, which turned out Spitfires and Hurricanes at an incredible rate. When Göring was forced to abandon daylight raids, he effectively conceded victory to the RAF. Although the Battle of Britain would not end until November 3, the Germans had lost it back in September. 

Between July and November, the RAF lost 915 fighters, 481 pilots killed, missing, or taken prisoner, and 422 pilots wounded. The RAF claimed 2,698 kills against the Germans, but documented German aircraft losses amounted to 1,733-still a crippling number. 

After the November 3 raid on London, the Battle of Britain proper ended, but the Blitz continued as the Luftwaffe turned to raids on industrial centers, especially the Coventry air raid (500 bombers dropped 600 tons of ordnance on the night of November 14) and Birmingham (hit mercilessly from November 19 to November 22). London was struck again on December 29, mainly in a massive incendiary attack that triggered more than 1,500 uncontrollable blazes. All through the winter of 1940-41, raids hit port cities, and on May 10, 1941, London was hit by an incendiary attack that was the worst and last of the Blitz. In the more than 2,000 fires started, some 3,000 were killed or injured. Defenders shot down 16 German bombers, the most shot down during any nighttime raid. 

Rather than see his air force destroyed, Hitler broke off the Blitz after the May 10 raid and redirected the bulk of the Luftwaffe to the eastern front war against the Soviet Union. Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain, would never be carried out.

Further reading: Bishop, Patrick. Fighter Boys: The Battle of Britain, 1940. New York: Viking, 2003; Bungay, Stephen. The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain. London: Aurum Press, 2002; Clayton, Tim, and Phil Craig. Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002; Wellum, Geoffrey. First Light. New York: Wiley, 2003. Gunston, Bill, and Chris Westhorp. The Illustrated Directory of Fighting Aircraft of World War II. St. Paul, Minn.: MBI Publishing, 2000; Jane's Information Group. Jane's All the World's Aircraft of World War II: Collector's Edition. New York: HarperCollins, 1994; Mondey, David. The Concise Guide to British Aircraft of World War II. London: Book Sales, 2002; Wilson, Stewart. Aircraft of World War II. Fishwyck, Australia: Australian Aviation, 1999.