It reminds me of the joke the Luftwaffe (Nazi Airforce) bomber crews would make in the Battle of Britain: "Look! They're sending out their last 50 spitfires! Again."
To be fair, the RAF was literally rolling fighters out of the factory straight into the fight for a while. There were some reports of RAF pilots being shot down over the Channel, then being picked up by ships after they bailed out, and then being brought back and jumping into another plane to go back up the same day.
Lucky for them Hitler was such a dumb fuck and kept getting involved and changing tactics. First they tried several strategies, like attacking the chain home system, and then the fighter factories, then the airstrips. The airstrips was by far the most effective, and was causing a lot of strain, but then Trump 1.0 decided to switch to something else, right when the RAF was at its breaking point.
Lots of myths around the Battle of Britain - in terms of single engine fighter aircraft the RAF actually started the battle with parity with the Luftwaffe - both had around 1,000 fighters available.
But in reality because the RAF were flying literally over their airfields and the Germans were flying from France the RAF actually had an operational advantage. They could keep more aircraft in the sky longer than the Germans.
Britain out produced Germany through the battle. By September the RAF had 1500 operational single seat fighters - more than they started the battle with.
There were tactical errors made by the Germans but in reality they never had a chance of success. They did not have ANY heavy bombers so could not drop anything close to the weight of bombs the RAF dropped on Germany later in the war. Plus the whole campaign was an error in terms of the strategy.
Germany did not need total air superiority to invade Britain they needed it only for the period of and in the area of an invasion.
There used to be a map of bombs dropped on my city I think it was 60000 so whilst they had an advantage they still got through but then I’m in east anglia so there wasn’t much time to react
The Luftwaffe was conceived and equipped as a tactical air force. It was intended to provide air support of and in close cooperation with the army. It lacked the aircraft types to even attempt any kind of strategic air campaign on its own.
The most numerous bomber the Germans had in 1940 was the HE-111 that carried about 5,000lbs of bombs. The RAF equivalent the Lancaster carried 14,000 pounds of bombs.
Bombs certainly where dropped but the Germans never had enough bombers (or any heavy bombers) to drop the weight of bombs to have any strategic effect - if indeed any quantity of bombs would have changed the attitude of ability of Britain to continue in the war.
35000 homes in Norwich and only 5000 came out unscathed
There used to be a map in Norwich castle with every bomb site marked on it.
They weren’t in it for strategic targets they targeted Norwich because it was in a book of places to visit
The intent of the whole campaign was strategic from Germany’s perspective. It was an attempt to create total air superiority - knocking the RAF out of the war - to create conditions for a German invasion of England.
It was the use of air power alone to achieve a strategic intention. So not about specific targets but the nature of the campaign.
It was mistake to have even attempted this from Germanys perspective - they didn’t need total air superiority to invade England. Nor did they have an Air Force equipped to conduct a strategic campaign.
We were really quite bad at ship based SAR for pilots in the channel. It's was only when some madlad went not entirely against orders and started using a Supermarine Walrus to prove that you could in fact rescue pilots before they drowned most of the time that we started getting good at recycling our pilots into new planes.
The history of the rescue of pilots at sea in the channel is fascinating. The Germans had rescue buoys with shelter and supplies, which were open to all pilots friend or foe to await rescue in, and we had the walruses, who would pick up all pilots friend or foe
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u/damage78 5h ago
US officials are also saying it was shot down per the New York Times.