soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:

> 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.

Throughout May and June 1940, the Luftwaffe generated more sorties per
aircraft than the French air force and the BAFF (RAF units based in
France). I *think* that the rest of the RAF wasn't doing better than
the Luftwaffe but haven't been able to find where I had read that, and
also this runs into the problem of which part of the RAF is doing
better than which part of the Luftwaffe e.g. a good Fighter Command
squadron will generate more sorties than a Luftwaffe Gruppe that's
just relocated twice and been heavily engaged for a month. And even
average figures, if I had them (which I don't) would run into the
problem of those RAF units that really were glorified training
outfits.

Now part of the equation in the low Allied performance was the fact
that the bases were often under attack or, worse, forced to relocate
in a hurry. Also, in the case of the French, new aircraft types
entering service in the middle of a campaign. None of these would
apply in a Luftwaffe vs carrier force scenario because a carrier is a
largely boolean proposition: either it's operative or it isn't, and
obviously relocating the unit wouldn't be as much of a problem as the
base would move as well.

I wonder how competitive the Bf 110 would be against carrier fighters
flown by the USN in this scenario. Against the 1945 USN, the 1940
Luftwaffe will soon be turned into scrap metal but against a 1945-
sized USN flying Midway-era types then the Bf 110 would make itself
useful.


(snip)

> > 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.

Not as much.

The Luftwaffe - like all airforces, really - had lists of targets
organized by type. The campaign started by a concerted effort that
focused overwhelmingly on Allied airfield in the first few days, with
an increasing amount of effort shifting to other targets like
battlefield interdiction, aircraft factories etc. The interdiction
targets were mostly marshaling yards and key road junctions, usually
small towns. So most of the planning involved in "let's get sector X
interdicted" had already been done beforehand and the Luftwaffe staff
only had to update the prior work with information on AA defense,
weather, current frontline etc.

Also, the Luftwaffe could more easily get away with unescorted bombers
- which it used a lot as a result - something that no longer was
possible in the BoB and would definitely not have been an option to
attack a carrier force. Which is what you mentioned as sortie rates
declining when the strength of the defenses increase.

(snip agreed points - sorry, I really don' have much to contribute to
the components of RAF vs Luftwaffe sortie rates, interesting as that
discussion would be)


LC