soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Louis C" wrote in message
news:38660ce0-6de5-4f2f-83f7-749ee09ae0dc@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
> Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>
>> Rich wrote i
>> > Quite simply, it also lacked the ability to generate a daily sortie
>> > rate that came even close to matching its numercial strength.
>
>> Has there been any work done on the causes of the sortie rate?
>
> I may be a little lost about the actual date, given how this thread
> seems to be doing the time warp again, but assuming we're still in
> 1940 then in May and June the Luftwaffe was by far the best of the
> belligerent air forces in terms of sortie generation.

Well Rich was talking Battle of Britain, and the number of Luftwaffe
fighters was very much a limit then. In the Battle of France the
allied air forces for a start lacked the ground control and secure
airbases to really go after the Luftwaffe, so at the end of the June
fighting the Bf110, despite some warnings, was still rated as a good
day fighter. So fighter numbers were not the same limit in mid 1940.

> By the time of the Battle of Britain, it fell behind though I'm not
> sure how much was an actual loss of capability as opposed to a change
> in the mission profile.

Hence the questions I asked about what factors were contributing.

> Given that in the Battle of Britain it was
> doing escorted bombing raids, this required lots of planning as
> opposed to simply sending fighter sweeps and more or less impromptu
> (or un-escorted) bomber strikes.

Yet there had to be good planning to handle interdiction when the
army was advancing so well.

The short range of the Bf109 and Ju87 meant they lost efficiency
as they had to keep moving bases. The early Luftwaffe raids on
Dunkirk were limited by the ranges involved.

We know sortie rates decline as fighting intensifies unless there is
a very good supply system in action. We know sortie rates decline
as the strength of the defences increases, the need for "proper"
escorts, the way a small defect in an aircraft matters more when the
defences are stronger or the ranges longer.

> By contrast, the RAF couldn't know exactly where and when the
> Luftwaffe would strike so it had to do a lot of fighter patrols just
> to be on the safe side, and the respective sortie totals reflect
> that.

Agreed, there were all those convoys for example. The RAF
was also operating out of its prepared airfields.

The RAF kept doing raids on Luftwaffe airfields, which forced
the Luftwaffe to hold back fighters for protection, plus others to
confront RAF fighters following the Luftwaffe back across the
channel.

> My point is that had this been a more free for all situation as occurs
> over a ground front, the Luftwaffe vs RAF sortie total would probably
> look better for the Germans, though how much better I don't know.

Agreed, and agreed on how much better being an unknown, hence
my questions.

It seem in mid to late 1940 the RAF enjoyed better supply of aircraft,
spares and aircrew, though its repair organisation was not up to the
requirements of the 1940 fighting and spare parts were a problem
until 1942. Problem being defined as considered to be holding up
repairs longer than preferred.

Geoffrey Sinclair
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