If hitler had concentrated on britain....

Very good thread, gentlemen! Time to go back to old times!

I do think that leaving the front line airfields and radar positions in southern England could have been a major strategical setback for the RAF. If the Germans could have occupied this base, then the Me-109s could have swept the rest of fighter groups in specific areas and Ju-87s could have been deployed there to smash the Royal Navy's ports.

But air superiority is one thing and crossing the Channel with improvised barges, plans and ill-trained forces for amphibious operations is another... The Royal Navy's losses would have been big against a dominant Luftwaffe —as happened in Crete, Malta and Dunkirk— but the losses of the invasion 'fleet' would have been much worse. Also, we are forgetting the merciless Channel weather and that even if some two or three German divisions could have made it ashore, how were they going to be kept supplied?

Without a Navy Germany could not invade Great Britain, regardless of an air victory.

Churchill knew, Dönitz knew, now we know that the only real posibility of defeating Great Britain was under the Atlantic.

 

Well, OK then, we seem to concur for the most part on this topic. I once wondered about an alternative plan to land in Scotland from bases in Norway, & once established there, move south. Scapa flow is of course near by. Anyway just thought I'd pitch that out for conversations sake.

 

Scotland I think would be a non-starter. Too far by sea and air from anywhere, Lowlands too well-defended and Highland impossible terrain plus poor road network.

Also, it was always Hitler's intention to achive a collapse of morale ( 'regime change' ) than pure military conquest and so Scotland would have been too far from London.

 

Martin, and what do you think about the frontline airfields being abandoned? Would it have affected operations as some have stated?

I'm most interested in listening to what you have to say about that because I remember that I posted some time ago something about those air fields and you just yelled at me because it wasn't true...

 

Manston came close to being put out of use, but was never abandoned ; neither were North Weald, Biggin Hill, Kenley or Middle Wallop which were heavily damaged but remained in action. Several other large airfields were left almost untouched eg Northolt, Duxford, Coltishall.

There were, even at that early stage of the war, a lot of good, operational airfields in England. The Luftwaffe did not possess enough bombers to 'blitz' the airfields effectively, quickly enough. Sure, a battle of attrition could have seen the Luftwaffe trying to demolish airfield after airfield, all the while taking heavier losses of both bombers and fighters. And yes, the RAF would have been taking losses as well.

But at that time, Britain had nothing else to lose ! Hitler, however, had his eyes set on other conquests and needed a strong Luftwaffe 'in being'. The argument comes back again and again to the fact that a SWIFT victory was needed ; the Luftwaffe ( although a fearsome fighting force ) did not have sufficient strength to deliver the fast, knockout blow needed. Once the fight developed into an attrition battle, losses became high for both sides - but unacceptable for the Luftwaffe.

And all this is without arguing whether airfields would have been 'abandoned' as such ; even when North Weald was hard-hit, some of the Hurricanes simply moved just two miles down the road to Stapleford Abbotts which the Luftwaffe never attacked at all......

[ 07. June 2004, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: Martin Bull ]

 

Thanks a lot, Martin! That's what I was expecting. Contrary to what people may think, old men come brighter with age.

So, in conclusion the Luftwaffe was not strong enough to actually force the RAF to abandon all the frontline airfields, right?

But we can agree that if the airfields would have been abandoned, the RAF would have been in a very bad strategical situation, right?

Or am I just saying insanities —which wouldn't be unusual?

 

Another thing:

The airfields at the time didn't have pavement air strips? Or most of them were made on flat clears of soft grass?



And if this is the case, I have another doubt I've read somewhere about Spitfires serving in the USSR. This is that Spitfires needed a lot of manteinance when serving in the Red Air Force, because the Red Air Force's air strips were always rough, made on flat agricultural steppes or on the huge steppes of the Ukraine, whilst the Soviet planes were specifically designed simple and strong to bear these conditions with the less manteinance level possible.

 

At the time of the Battle of Britain, most of the airfields had grass runways ( albeit well-kept and generally level).

The Hurricanes with their wide undercarriage were suited to these, the Spitfires could be trickier to handle on uneven surfaces. But at the same time, the grass runways were far easier to repair than damaged concrete surfaces.

Yes, if the Luftwaffe had been able to field, say, 1000 four-engined bombers escorted by Fw190s in the Summer in 1940, the RAF would have been in real trouble.

But then, if my aunt were a man, she'd be my uncle.....

 

Reading further into this subject, it's interesting to note just how faulty Luftwaffe intelligence was, and again ( as the RAF were to discover for themselves ) just how difficult it was to find and destroy vital targets.

In the vital 'Adlertag' stage of the Battle ( August 12th-15th ) the following airfields, none of which were related to the air defence of Britain, were attacked : Lee-on-Solent, Harwell, Brize Norton, Farnborough, Ford, Gosport, Thorney Island, Worthy Down, Eastchurch, Linton-upon-Ouse, Dishforth and Andover. 'What If' all that effort could have been focussed on the vital sector stations ?

In addition, nine attempts were made to bomb the important Rolls-Royce, Westland and Gloster factories ; only twice did bombs fall within five miles of their target.

 

Ok, but let's not forget the British plan to drop Mustard Gas on the invasion beaches in 1940.
At least two airfields in Scotland-Lossiemouth on Tayside and Grangemouth in the Central Belt were earmarked for this. Both were inside the possible landing areas for German troops, and easily covered by Naval units from both Rosyth and Scapa Flow.
Plus, the GHQ line in Scotland came into it's own because of the terrain. If the Germans had landed in Fife, they would have been contained by the stop line stretching from north of Kirkcaldy west to Perthshire. If they had got past that, the sheer amount of troops stationed in Fife and Lothian would have turned the invasion into a ww1-style battle of attrition.

Regards,

Gordon

 

I don't think that a mustard gas attack would have had the slightiest effect on the invasion attempt. Every single German foot soldier carried a gas mask within a can in his belt for almost the entire war, and if not, at least until 1943.

 

And there was also the plan to 'set the sea afire' with pumped oil....

 

Bloody Brits, they take everything too serious...

There was the Channel, there were the clifts and there was the RN, why bothering with burning oil and mustard gas?

 

So the Brits were prepared to use gas first?? Glad to see you are still lurking around Gordon.

 

Well hell, if the Brits really wanted to do them in they would have met them on the beaches with their cooking!

 

Some time ago read/heard from the Finnish Waffen-SS men that the gas mask was soon thrown away as they joined as it was a suitable case for carrying personal items etc(??). Didn´t say though if the mask was put in the tornister or totally dumped but I wonder if anyone else knows about this?

 

I was always told they dumped the masks and used them for carrying food...

Guess they must have kept them somewhere... Would have been alot of angry German quartermasters...

 

Freddie,
You know the British love to overreact mate!

Regards,
Gordon

 

So the Brits were prepared to use gas first?? Glad to see you are still lurking around Gordon. </font>[/QUOTE]Framert,
Cheers mate!
I'm afraid lurking's the operative word. Too busy earning a crust to "live" on here just now.
Bloody awful state of affairs....
Plus I'm impersonating Carl just now. My pc went bang-literally-about ten days ago, so I'm typing this in the public library.
Regards,

Gordon

[ 10. June 2004, 10:06 AM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]

 

The Luftwaffe had an advantage of only 5:3 over the RAF in single seat fighters at the start of the BOB and the odds only got worse for the Luftwaffe during the course of the battle