The Battle of Britain 1940

I. The starting situation

The plan: Operation "Sea Lion"

On 22 June 1940 France capitulated. Hitler hoped for an understanding with England, but Churchill, Prime Minister since 10 May, wanted to fight on. On 16 July Hitler ordered preparations for Operation "Sea Lion", the invasion of England. Göring promised that the RAF would be destroyed in time for the landing to begin around 15 September.

The Kriegsmarine was no match for the Royal Navy in numbers. The invasion fleet therefore had to be protected from the air. Air supremacy over the Channel and southern England was thus indispensable.

The Luftwaffe: good, but not built for this task

The Luftwaffe had been built up as a tactical weapon to support the ground forces. It had proved this impressively in Poland and in the Western campaign. It was not suited to a strategic air war against an island realm:

The Bf 109, the only German fighter that could take on the Spitfire and Hurricane, had so little range that it could only stay over southern England for about 20 minutes. That was too little for effective escort.
The twin-engined Bf 110 was too cumbersome.
The bombers were too lightly armed and carried too few bombs.

Deployed were mainly Luftflotte 2 under Kesselring and Luftflotte 3 under Sperrle, plus Luftflotte 5 in Norway under Stumpff. On Eagle Day, Luftflotten 2 and 3 had around 875 medium bombers, 316 dive bombers, 702 single-engined and 227 twin-engined fighters.

The Royal Air Force: the Dowding System

On 1 August, Fighter Command had 570 Hurricanes and Spitfires at its disposal, two thirds of them Hurricanes, and of these only 367 were operational. In numbers that was not overwhelming. The decisive factor was organisation.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command since 1936, had combined technology, ground defence and fighters into a single system. It was later named the "Dowding System" after him:

A chain of radar stations on the south and east coasts, "Chain Home", reported German formations while they were still approaching. Its transmitter masts were around 110 metres (360 feet) high. The radar could only poorly detect low-flying aircraft, so "Chain Home Low" stations were built in addition.
The Observer Corps provided reports from the ground.
All reports came together in the Filter Room at Bentley Priory, the headquarters of Fighter Command, and went from there to the groups and sector stations. This allowed the fighters to be directed precisely to the approaching formations.
The country was divided into fighter groups. No. 11 Group covered the south-east including London, No. 10 Group the south-west and Wales, No. 12 Group under Trafford Leigh-Mallory the Midlands and East Anglia.

The system saved strength. The British did not have to keep their scarce fighters constantly in the air, but could deploy them where they were needed. In addition there was the decryption of German radio messages at Bletchley Park (ULTRA), which had made much of it readable since January 1940.

When was the battle?

The British date the battle from 10 July to 31 October 1940. German historians usually set the start in mid-August 1940 and the end in May 1941, when the bomber formations were withdrawn for Operation Barbarossa. 17 September 1940, the day Hitler postponed "Sea Lion", is also named as the end.

II. The course of the battle

Phase 1: The Channel battle (10 July to early August)

On 10 July the first attacks on convoys in the Channel and on Royal Navy ports began. The Luftwaffe wanted to draw the RAF into large engagements and wear down Fighter Command. On 12 August it attacked the radar stations for the first time. The damage remained slight. Göring stopped the attacks on the radar stations because the British succeeded in using emergency transmitters to make destroyed stations appear active.

Phase 2: The Eagle Attack (13 to 24 August)

The "Eagle Attack" was originally planned for 10 August; because of bad weather it was postponed by three days. On 13 August, "Eagle Day", the Luftwaffe flew attacks on airfields and armaments factories. Poor reconnaissance and inadequate coordination meant that success was slight. The Luftwaffe reported far more kills than there actually were and believed it had destroyed numerous airfields.

In the days around 13 August, the Reich Air Ministry considerably overestimated its standing against the enemy. It reported a loss ratio of 1:3 in its favour; in fact, among the fighters it was more like 1:2, and with the losses of the Bf 110 it was even worse. The consequence: the leadership believed that Fighter Command was on the verge of collapse.

On 20 August, Churchill spoke the sentence in the House of Commons that made the pilots famous: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Since then, the roughly 3,000 pilots of Fighter Command have been called "The Few".

Phase 3: Attacks on Fighter Command (24 August to 6 September)

Now the Luftwaffe concentrated its attacks on the airfields and installations of Fighter Command. It came very close to its goal of air superiority over southern England. Fighter Command's losses in aircraft and pilots were heavy. Nevertheless, the RAF's fighter losses soon fell below the number of replacements delivered.

Phase 4: The switch to London

Hitler had forbidden attacks on London. On the night of 24 to 25 August, a German bomber that was supposed to hit oil tanks at Thameshaven lost its way and dropped bombs on London. Churchill ordered a retaliatory raid on Berlin. On the night of 26 August, 81 bombers attacked the Reich capital, and further raids followed. After a speech in the Sportpalast in which Hitler threatened retaliation, he ordered the attack on London on 4 September.

This took the pressure off Fighter Command at a critical stage. The airfields were able to recover. In addition, London lay at the limit of the range of the German escort.

On 7 September, "Black Saturday", the first major daylight raid on London began at about 4 p.m. According to British figures, it claimed 430 dead and 1,600 injured. London was then attacked on 57 consecutive nights. Only the nights of 3 and 28 November passed without alarms and bombs.

III. 15 September 1940

On 15 September, the Luftwaffe threw its strongest and most concentrated wave of attacks against London in order to force the RAF into a battle of annihilation. The weather was good. Around 1,500 aircraft from both sides took part in the air battles of the day. The German formations were intercepted in two great waves. A closed cloud cover helped to scatter the formations, and London suffered no heavy damage.

The Luftwaffe lost 56 aircraft that day, the RAF just under 30. The figures for the German aircraft deployed vary depending on the source, between about 1,100 and 1,700. The British themselves had reported more kills during the day than there actually were. More important than the figures was the effect: the Wehrmacht leadership recognised that the Luftwaffe could not win air supremacy. On 17 September Hitler postponed Operation "Sea Lion" indefinitely. Today the British celebrate the day as "Battle of Britain Day".

IV. The Blitz

From September 1940 to May 1941, the Luftwaffe continued the attacks by night. The targets were Britain's industrial potential and the morale of the population. In November 1940 other cities were attacked as well.

Coventry

The heaviest raid of these months struck the city of Coventry on the night of 14 to 15 November 1940. The operation bore the code name "Moonlight Sonata", because a bright moonlit night was necessary for success. More than 500 bombers dropped around 500 tonnes of high-explosive bombs and about 30,000 incendiary bombs. The old town and the medieval cathedral were destroyed. According to the Imperial War Museum, 568 people died and 850 were seriously injured. Another source considers up to 1,000 dead possible, as many workers who had moved there were not recorded. The National Socialists invented the word "coventrieren" ("to coventrate") for total destruction.

A well-known story circulates about Coventry: Churchill is said to have known about the raid in advance from decrypted radio messages and not to have had the city warned, in order to preserve the secret of ULTRA. Today's historical research doubts that the British knew so precisely. It still works as a thought experiment: how would you have decided yourself?

The toll of the Blitz

About 43,000 civilians died in the Blitz, almost half of all of Britain's civilian war dead. One in six Londoners lost their home.

V. The people: "The Few"

Around 3,000 fighter pilots took part in the battle. Alongside Britons and men from the Commonwealth, Polish, Czech and other exile pilots fought. When pilots became scarce, the Poles were taken into the RAF squadrons, and two Polish fighter squadrons were formed, Nos. 302 and 303. No. 303 Squadron was only formed on 2 August 1940 and, according to one source, shot down 126 German aircraft in just 42 days. It is regarded as the most successful squadron of Fighter Command in this battle. 29 Polish pilots were killed.

The dispute over tactics

Dowding came into conflict with the advocates of the "Big Wing", above all Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Douglas Bader. They wanted to assemble large formations of fighters and deploy them together. Together with the shortcomings of British night fighting during the Blitz, this led to Dowding's fall: in November 1940 he was replaced against his will; his successor Sholto Douglas was also an advocate of the Big Wing.

VI. Losses and final balance

The figures differ depending on the source, because the time periods and methods of counting differ:

Source	Figure
German Historical Museum (entire air battle)	The Luftwaffe lost 2,265 aircraft; 867 more were more than ten per cent damaged. Just under 2,000 airmen were killed, about 2,600 were listed as missing or taken prisoner.
Air & Space Forces Magazine	Total German losses 1,887, of which 650 Bf 109s and 223 Bf 110s.
World History Encyclopedia (British time frame)	RAF 788, Luftwaffe 1,294 aircraft, roughly in a ratio of 6:10.
Wikipedia	Fighter Command lost 544 pilots killed by October 1940.

What is certain: the loss of pilots weighed more heavily on the Luftwaffe than the loss of aircraft. The attrition through wounds, captivity and death was always considerably higher than for the RAF. German airmen who were shot down did not come back; British pilots who were shot down and bailed out over their own territory often did.

Why did the Luftwaffe lose?

It was not designed for this task: too little range for the fighters, bombers too weak.
The British had a better organised defence system with radar and ground control.
The German objectives kept changing. For weeks the Luftwaffe dispersed its attacks across the entire RAF before concentrating on Fighter Command. The switch to London took the pressure off the airfields.
The Luftwaffe overestimated its successes and underestimated the enemy's reserves.

VII. What remains

The Luftwaffe was unable to knock out British air defence. The invasion did not take place, and Hitler turned his gaze towards the Soviet Union. Great Britain remained undefeated and later became the Allies' staging area. For the foreseeable future, RAF Bomber Command was the only weapon with which Churchill could strike Germany. How the air war developed afterwards is described on the page Air War.

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