The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The centrally controlled fighter defences and the special role played by radar were among the many factors misunderstood by the German Air Force when their air attacks were finally launched. It was assumed on the German side that British radar was relatively unsophisticated, and it got less bombing attention than had been expected. It was also believed that RAF fighters were tied closely to the area around their station and lacked precisely the flexibility and intelligence that the system in practice gave them. These misapprehensions were compounded with a persistent underestimation of the size of Fighter Command and the capacity to reinforce it continuously with men and aircraft. It was assumed throughout the German campaign, well into 1941, that the RAF could not replace losses fully and was a constantly declining threat, even when the reality of high German losses in August and September 1940 suggested a quite different conclusion.⁷³

The British had the opposite problem, persistently overestimating the size and range of the German front-line air force, pilot numbers and production levels. Air intelligence suggested a German aircraft output of 24,400 in 1940 – the true figure was 10,247 – and a front-line force in early August of 5,800 planes, including 2,550 bombers, when the actual figure of serviceable bombers was 37 per cent of this figure. Against Britain the three air fleets employed a total of only 2,445 serviceable aircraft of all types on the eve of Eagle Day. Early evaluations wrongly assumed that German bombers and long-range fighters had sufficient range to cover the whole of the British Isles from French bases, while it was believed short-range fighters could reach as far as Hull (when they could barely contest the airspace over London). The RAF also assumed that the German enemy had generous numbers of pilots and could make good losses of men and aircraft sufficiently to expand the size of the air force even under combat conditions, which was also never the case.⁷⁴ These contrasts in perception were important in shaping the attitude both sides took to the conflict. German forces assumed that what they did by day and by night seriously eroded the capability of an already meagre RAF; British air forces, on the other hand, were spurred to urgent expansion and heroic defiance against an enemy thought to be powerfully and dangerously endowed.

The German determination to start the full air assault with a flourish on Eagle Day was frustrated by grey skies and further rain. Substantial attacks had already been made since 8 August, and the first raids on radar installations and RAF fighter stations followed four days later, seriously damaging the Ventnor radar station on the Isle of Wight, and the airfields at Manston and Hawkinge in Kent. But this was not a real battle. German air units were finally told to prepare for Eagle Day on 13 August, but poor weather persisted and the attack was half-hearted. Units had been ordered not to fly, but the message had not been received by all of them and sorties began early in the morning and went on until evening. Some bombers arrived without their escorts, some escorts without their bombers. The German losses totalled 45 aircraft at the cost of 13 British fighters. Not a single Fighter Command airfield had been attacked. This is a well-known failure, but it nevertheless masks the fuller picture of German operational strategy during August, of which direct attacks on the RAF formed only a part. The fighter-to-fighter contest watched daily in the skies over southern England dramatically symbolized the struggle for the British public then and now, but it was only part of what the German Air Force actually did.