Thank's for that,

It had a lot to do with the original post of P2000.

[/quote]And I've never claimed that 2" rockets were a dogfighting weapon. I never mentioned dog fighting. They're not words which appear on any of my previous posts. So I'd rather not have words put into my mouth.[quote]

Quite, you havn't.

I feel that you are contradicting yourself somewhat, or taking a rather simplistic view. Tackling the medium level bomber formations head on whilst inbound would involve being bounced by the escorting 109s, hence you will end up in a dogfight. Whether it was Hurricanes or Spits being scrambled with 2" rockets or mines they'd suffer a performace penalty. The weapons themselves might have been light but you're ignoring the drag. I don't think we need a computer simulation to see that a fighter flying straight and level over a bomber formation with 6 mines and their accociated trailing wires (not to mention parachutes!!!) would suffer a huge penalty. In fact it sounds suicidal to me. The 109s would be rubbing their hands in glee. Not just a speed penalty either, underwing stores (which the fighters weren't fitted for) would affect all forms of handling and performance.

If you're in position to attack from the front of the formation then use your primary armament, it was effective! Ideally dive through from the front quarter so that you have some speed to deal with the inevitable reposte from the escorts.

The quote from Len Deighton just shows bad drills on the part of the Luftwaffe formation. Rockets exploding within the formation? Only if they hit something, proximity and timed fuses came much later, ditto cannon fire. Almost certainly this was machinegun fire so nothing exploding anywhere, as they didn't appear to hit anything....

However, since I can't, it's surely obvious that if any aircraft still had any rockets left after the initial attack, they could get rid of them simply by jettisoning the racks and the rockets.

I wasn't aware that the rocket rails were jettisonable, I certainly havn't read any accounts of this happening. Drop tanks etc later in the war were rarely jettisoned due to shortages.

The high altitude issue doesn't exist. We're talking about a weapon system designed to dislocate bomber formations. The bombers almost always flew at low or medium height.

Speed is life for a fighter pillock, you can trade altitude for speed. The bombers may have flown at medium level but the escorts didn't. 'Just attack the bombers' is simplistic in the extreme. Indeed fighters on both sides in the BoB would start out at altitude and fight until altitude had been lost, then dodge hedges on the way back to base. The 109s had significant advantages in climbng back into the fight.

The gumps were amazed to hear about the altitudes that BoB dogfights occured at, IIRC their oxygen equipment was primitive in comparison...

Hurricanes were fine aircraft more than capable of dancing with 109s of the day. The RAF was not a one trick pony, Spitfires not the be all and end all. We did reinforce Singapore, with Hurricanes (in packing crates if I recall!). To my mind this was a perfectly natural decision to take, horses for courses. We seem to have discussed the reasons for not sending Spitfires ad neaseum, I doubt it would have made an iota of difference if we had. Call me a fanboi of the Hawker design but I do feel your are belittling a fine aircraft with your assumption that we'd still be enjoying slings in tropical heat but for a few Spits. Not "white mans magic"? Your posts seem to suggest that they were, which is, I feel, a modern day view rather than keeping with the times. If I was thousands of miles away from the factory I'd have Hurricanes everytime, and twice on Sundays. Ship me over blue string and some gaffer tape whilst you're at it too. We can keep the heavy roller for the cricket pitch.

Japanese military prowess came as quite a shock, in particular the equipment they fielded. They managed to keep two 70,000 ton battleships quiet amongst other things. Little was known about the Zero, certainly no-one dared to believe that a backward nation such as the nips could challenge our own designs.

I never said the R4M was a "urine-poor" weapon as you said -- clearly it wasn't. However, since 24 R4Ms were used like a giant canister round, grapeshot or buckshot shell -- here i leave you to choose your simile -- of course it was effective. However, I do believe that the 30mm Mk108 cannons that the 262 mounted were superior than the 24 R4Ms, which is why they were also mounted in late 109's (Gs, Ks etc), FW190s, Bf110's, 410's, He162s, Me163s, Go229s, Ta183s (the last two being experimental aircraft that never really left the drawing board.) to name a few (list off the top of my head). Whereas, the number of aircraft mounting the R4Ms were considerably fewer (off the top of my head, a few 190s and the 262). If the R4M was the wonder weapon you imply, surely steps would have been taken to alleviate the factors that made it impractical to mount it on most fighters as opposed to mounting the 30mm cannons? That the R4Ms developed into greater things is besides the point; the 30mm cannon was, i believe, superior to the R4M at the time.

Regarding two inch rockets, why are you so utterly convinced that the finest minds at Hawker, Supermarine, De Havilland, Bristol, Westland etc all failed to pick up on the idea of mounting said two inch rockets? I'm not debating how effective at breaking a formation they are, I am simply saying that if they weren't mounted, there must have been a good reason. This ignores the air ministry and RAF high command, the manufacturers didn't do it, and I highly believe that this was for sound practicality or performance reasons.

"Incidentally the leading edge slats were invented by Handley-Page. I hope they collected their royalties after the war." hehe, shouldn't think so!
re the 109E. Yes, it had weak landing gear. This was redressed, I beleive, by the later series of 109s (F and G series onwards). But no, i cannot quote sources. I cannot remember from where I read this. As I cannot quote sources from it, I cede you the point. However, it is generally agreed that the 109 stalled relatively easily and could be difficult to recover.

"Again, I'd prefer people to answer what I've written rather than what they seem to think I've written."
As for P40s and Hurricanes absorbing more fire, well yes they were more suited to absorbing ground fire in ground attack. They would also absorb more damage from aerial attack as well. I never once mentioned that you wanted to use spits for ground attack -- the thought never occured to me. But the hurri and p40 were more rugged and so perhaps more suited to desert conditions. However, as dogfighters they were poor -- there are reports, for example, of a B24 Liberator 4 engined bomber outclimbing a P40 (performance dropped as it climbed considerably).
Spitfires would have helped the air battle against the 109s, of this you are absolutely correct. As a matter of interest, do you know how most aircraft reached the Desert Airforce? Via the Takoradi Trail -- 3697 miles from Takoradi in Ghana to egypt, with stops. It took them about a week to do, and 10% of aircraft sent failed to make it. The alternative was to send them all the way around the cape of South Africa, which took considerably longer.
Why not sail them in through the Straights of Gibraltar? Well that I do not know (although Uboats, Kriegsmarine and Italian Navies have something to do with it i should think, and there would be ample time for aerial attacks too); Derek Robinson does not suggest why in his book A good Clean Fight. However, it does perhaps shed a bit of light as to why we didn't simply ferry spare squadrons of Spits out to the DAF. If it took that much effort to get aircraft to the desert, perhaps that is why the best british fighters weren't risked in the even longer trip to take them to Burma?


"Moi! Accuse service chiefs of being jackasses. Dear oh dear, I never would, and certainly not a word of criticism of dear old Haig. Everybody knows those 700,000 soldiers who died in France and Flanders were all victims of accidental discharges when cleaning their weapons. How could anybody blame the general staff for that?"

This is a rather disrespectful thing to both the generals and soldiers. No one can say the generals are blameless, but as Peter Hart mentions in The Somme, the generals did the best anyone could have expected of them, given the technology, accepted doctrines, time scale, pressures put on them ton honour the entente commitments (bear in mind the supreme commander of the Western Front was a French General, not a British one.) And so under constant demand for success, attempts were made to win that success at the cost of preparation.
There were tactics that could achive success with relatively few strategies -- such as the bite and hold tactics that Rawlinson was adept at carrying out. Yet to achieve these, there was huge amounts of preparation needed, a huge logistical nightmare. And these only worked on a small scale. You could not achive the concentration of guns nor the preparation needed for a battle the size of the Somme that Joffre wanted to help remove pressure from Verdun.
There were huge casualties because Britain shared with France the brunt of the war. In this way, it was russia that bore the brunt of the fighting in the Second World War, and this helped the other Allies escape with considerabley fewer casualties. However, in fierce battles against well defended positions, the casualty rate for us was brutally high as well. One only has to look at Monte Cassino, Iwo Jima or Stalingrad to see. However, in the second world war, heavily defended areas like the Somme (or Passchendale or Ypres or Arras... etc etc) were not present in the same way or numbers. Afterall, the entire of the Western front was a well defended strong point in WW1. And of course there were more weapons, doctrines, methods of overcoming these not present in the first world war. No, the generals are not blameless. However, they have certainly been unjustly villified.

Originally Posted by littlejim

No, Rommel didn't get to Cairo. But if he had done we'd have known who to blame, wouldn't we?

When General Kenney was sent to take over command in the South West Pacific he immediately decided that the best weapon to neutralise the Jap airfields were small bombs attached to parachutes with delayed action fuses so the bomber got clear before they exploded. And Kenney didn't have to get the bombs designed, or ordered, or tested, or argued about. Because Kenney had invented exactly those type of bombs twenty years before, had them thoroughly tested, manufactured and several thousand put in storage against the day they were needed.

If you can quote an example of an RAF officer with similar prescience, I'd be delighted to hear about him.

1. To blame the RAF for Rommel's victory (If he'd got to Cairo) would be similar to blaming the fall of Singapore on a lack of decent armour. Rather missing the more obvious reasons IMHO.

2. For an example of a forward thinking RAF officer whose prescient activities and decisions saved the day, how about Dowding?

Not wishing to drag this post down into the gutter again, but your posts do seem to be rather of the pom-bashing order (regardless of your place of birth). This tends to detract from some of your points with sweeping generalisations and assumptions which others more knowledgeable and erudite than I have already pointed out.

The RAF treated the defence of Britain as its highest priority vis fighter production throughout the early war years; considering the close call in 1940, that seems reasonable even with 20-20 hindsight.

Hi LJ,

Jet lag just about squared away now thanks!

Originally Posted by littlejim

In World War II the British seem to have generally fought well below their weight. It's not a case of an exploring British historian occasionally stubbing his toe against an unpleasant truth on the path to the truth, it's more a case of trying to climb over bloody great rockfalls of them. Every service and every branch of every service made plenty of terrible errors.

So now it’s Great Britain as a whole that fought poorly during WWII is it LJ? Such a disrespectful, biased, and wild generalisation is not really worthy of any response, let alone this particular debate. So let’s move on.

Originally Posted by littlejim

November, '41. First Mustang is landed at Liverpool.

Actually, my sources indicate that the first Mustang delivered to Britain (AG346; the second RAF aircraft with AG345 having remained in the US) arrived in Oct 41 and was flown from RAF Burtonwood on 24th of that month.

Originally Posted by littlejim

Well, I'm frequently accused of hindsight but I think it would have been difficult to persuade anybody on Malta at that time that the worst of the siege was over.

Anyway, your main point is clear. In the 11 months since the Mustangs began arriving in the UK it was impossible to send any to the Med. Impossible to use them to attack Rommel's supply lines, impossible to use them to attack the Italian supply ships, impossible to base them in Malta and Egypt to supply continual air cover for the Malta convoys.

Fair point about the hindsight LJ; at least when looking at the issue from tactical and operational level knowledge. However, remember that Ultra had also suggested to the Allies by this stage that Hitler had rejected Kesselring’s requests for an airborne assault.

Originally Posted by littlejim

The RAF had its war, everybody else in British uniform had theirs, and rarely the twain would meet.

You’re absolutely correct LJ. Only the RAF was conducting operations from the UK in complete isolation from everyone else. There were no RN offensive ops. No RN minelaying. No RN mine clearance. No RN convoy escorts. No FAA actions. No Air Sea Rescue activities. No commando ops. No SOE insertions.

With respect, that is a particularly facile comment.

Originally Posted by littlejim

Of course the really crazy thing is that the RAF had a superb long range fighter, recce and ground attack aircraft before the war in the Gloster F.9/37. With the advantage of a twin engined safety margin and battle damage resistant air cooled radials.

I don’t really see your point LJ. I’ve already acknowledged that there was a failure by the RAF to appreciate the potential of twin engined types such as the Whirlwind, particularly in what would now be referred to as an Offensive Counter Air (OCA) role. Moreover, the F9/37 was inferior to the Whirlwind in several respects and there were other radial engined types entering service. The decision was therefore made for Gloster to concentrate on developing turbojet designs. Swings and roundabouts.

Originally Posted by littlejim

The 190 didn't appear in combat until 5 months after the period I'm talking about, so I don't see the relevance.

Err, I’d be grateful if you could clarify exactly what period you are discussing LJ. You’ve persistently referred to events and deployments throughout 1941 and 1942 in your posts. Yet the FW-190 was initially delivered to 6/JG26 at Le Bourget in Aug 1941 and saw combat for the first time (against Spitfire Vs) on 27 Sep 41. It is generally considered that the FW190 was superior to the Spitfire V until the Mark IX arrived around 12 months later.

Originally Posted by littlejim

In any case Britain wasn't going to be invaded by 190's landing in the UK and the pilots getting out with pistols. An invasion needed an Army, and the German Army was in Russia by then.

You miss the point LJ. The British leadership needed to be seen to be doing several things. At the strategic level, Churchill needed to show the Soviets that we were not exploiting Barbarossa and were maintaining pressure on Germany in the West. The growing Bomber Campaign and the various Rhubarb, Circus, Poplars, Rangers etc were the most obvious way of achieving this from an Air Component perspective. The simultaneous RN activities in the Channel and North Sea meanwhile demanded a degree of air superiority.

Secondly, British public morale remained extremely fragile following total defeat on the Continent, the extreme fears of invasion the previous summer, and an unprecedented Blitz. In addition, low level hit and run raids against the South Coast created public consternation out of all proportion to their military or industrial effect, and demanded asset intensive standing patrols. A renewed Blitz or even an expansion of the various daytime ‘nuisance’ raids conducted by the Luftwaffe could not be tolerated given the public concern over the Salisbury raids in particular; Fighter Command was the primary guard against those fears.

Finally, there remained considerable concern amongst the British Leadership regarding the increasing German naval threat. Considerable damage could have been accomplished against RN and Merchant Navy facilities in the South of England had the Luftwaffe enjoyed a more favourable air situation.

I think these fears were very visceral for Churchill who always viewed defence of the homeland as the pre-eminent requirement for ultimate victory.

Originally Posted by littlejim

The attrition caused by the sweeps was all in the Germans' favour.

Have I ever suggested otherwise? OCA ops such as those conducted between 1941 and 1943 always favour the defender in terms of losses; the Luftwaffe discovered this for themselves in 1940, and again during Bodenplatte on New Years Day 1945. However, with the Empire Air Training Scheme and thousands of other aircrew being trained in the USA, the Allies had a far greater capacity to replace losses.

Originally Posted by littlejim

As I seem to keep saying ad nauseam. You tied down two bloody squadrons out of an entire air force!

Again, I would suggest you miss the entire point and remain preoccupied with the single engined fighter v fighter issue.

Fighter Command operations between Dec 40 and mid 43 were an enabler which allowed a variety of other RAF, RN and (in due course) USAAF, as well as Joint ops to be conducted with far greater freedom. Meanwhile, the threat of encountering RAF aircraft day or night remained a factor in wider Luftwaffe offensive, night fighter, recce, maritime patrol, transport and training tasks, not to mention Axis surface ops along the entire French, Belgian and Dutch coastline.

Originally Posted by littlejim

Are you suggesting that British and German single engined fighters could contribute anything to ops in the Bay of Biscay or the Atlantic approaches? They might as well have been on the moon for all the difference they could make out there.

Read my posts more carefully LJ. I have never suggested single engined types operated to any significant extent over the Bay of Biscay. I referred to generic fighter ops including twin engined types, and the influence which could be brought on the Bay of Biscay from hampering Axis shipping movements through the Channel. I prefer to consider wider aspects rather than just concentrating upon one facet of RAF and Fighter Command air-air ops.

However, single engined types did occasionally range as far South as the Bay of Biscay, normally to provide cover for specific ops. Ironically, in the Times today is the obituary for Terry Spencer DFC, a colourful character who flew Mustangs and Spitfires operationally in Europe before working as a photographer for Life after the war. The article describes how he flew ‘low level attacks on shipping in the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel…’ It also mentions long range Mustang attacks ‘deep into France, Germany and the other occupied countries attacking trains, boats and army convoys’.

So much for lunar fighter sweeps then.

Originally Posted by littlejim

Rapid deployment of tired/untested aircraft can bite. So can losing wars.

But we didn’t lose.

Originally Posted by littlejim

Yes, you keep telling me how much easier it was to operate fighter-bombers in Burma than dive-bombers. The problem with that, and again, I don't know why I keep saying it over and over, is that the fighter-bombers couldn't knock out the targets the Army wanted knocked out.

Incorrect. Fighter bombers were sometimes unable to service one specific category of targets which could potentially be destroyed by dive bomber attacks when the weather was suitable. I suggest that retaining a fighter bomber force capable of getting under the weather and into narrow valleys to service the majority of all other targets, whilst also being able to defend themselves against fighters and operate from small forward strips, was more effective than concentrating on dive bombers which were so weather limited during the monsoon season. Air support to the Burma Campaign was widely praised by Wingate, Slim and many other land commanders. Slim himself stated:

‘The fabric of our Campaign was woven by the close inter-meshing of land and air operations…without the victory of the air forces, there could have been no victory for the Army’ (Field Marshall Viscount Slim, Defeat into Victory: battling Japan in Burma and India 1942-45).

A service should never rest on its laurels but, with respect, I tend to place greater weight on Slim’s comments than your own LJ.

Originally Posted by littlejim

The situation in Italy with the cessation of Apache dive bomber missions was almost certainly due to the incredible ability of the German Army to put up curtains of deadly accurate flak. The Japs couldn't put up any real flak in the jungle, though it was probably a different story around bridges.

The USAAF never viewed the A-36 with particular enthusiasm, describing it in official reports as an ‘inferior dive bomber’ (Bill Gunston, Wings of Fame Vol 1). Indeed, many USAAF units wired the A-36 dive brakes shut and operated in a purely conventional fighter bomber role, albeit this was partly a response to apocryphal stories of the brakes deploying in flight.

Originally Posted by littlejim

I find your criticisms of the long aerial mine most interesting. Especially in view of your experience as a military aviator, and how you're able to reassure me that no nation in WWII would have anything to do with such a crazy idea. Now go back and read my post again and you'll find that the LAM was invented by the RAF, not by me. And you may be interested to learn that thousands of LAMs were dropped by the RAF in action, but not in the BoB. They were dropped in batches of 120 from Harrow bombers during the Blitz, at night, in an attempt to knock down single enemy raiders, an activity which neither of us would be surprised to learn was a complete waste of time.

I’m well aware that the LAM was a British concept LJ. However, I would suggest that the mere 112 LAM sorties conducted by a handful of 93 Sqn aircraft hardly amounted to the adoption of the tactic by Fighter Command when compared to the enormous numbers of Hurricane, Defiant, Blenheim, Havoc and Beaufighter defensive sorties launched during the Blitz!

Originally Posted by littlejim

It's the fighters attacking head on which drop the mines, just a few hundred yards in front of the bombers. Because, sire, they have a cunning plan, which is to avoid colliding with the bombers. So they drop the mines a couple of hundred feet higher up and avoid any chance of colliding with the bombers. The mines do the dangerous work of breaking up the formation, not the fighters. See the notation at the top of this post about the tactics used by 501 Squadron.

Right, so now the Sector Controller has to coordinate sufficient fighters ahead and above the enemy formation to lay mines, this most likely requiring reduced speed during deployment to avoid damaging parachutes, whilst simultaneously avoiding the escorts. Then, after dropping the LAMs you want them to fly over the formation before presumably rolling into a stern conversion for what by now would be a lengthy tail chase. Meanwhile, the bombers penetrate further, and the defenders tactical flexibility of mission command, fuel and time to engage conventionally is reduced.

Head on attacks by fighters using conventional mg and cannon worked for us in the Battle of Britain, and it worked for Germany later in the war. As others have said, speed is life. Daylight use of LAMs by fighters would have incurred unacceptable penalties for the RAF aircraft involved.

Originally Posted by littlejim

Yes, I know about Heinz Knoke. But can I point out one little detail? Four LAMs at 14 lbs each is 56 lbs. The bombs that Knoke were trying to haul aloft and aim weighed 500 lbs. Considerable difference. Even at my advanced age I can still carry 56 lbs on my back -- though certainly not very far. But even when I was young and fit I'd have found it hard work running up a hill with 500 lbs on my back. Perhaps that was why Knoke's results were disappointing.

I think that if you re-read my reference to Knoke LJ, you’ll find that I did not make a direct comparison to LAMs. Rather I was attempting to offer an acknowledgment of your point and a more balanced argument that other techniques of air-air bombing were attempted!

Originally Posted by littlejim

I've got a picture of a Wgr-21 in front of me. It looks like a beer barrel. I've also got a picture of some naval ratings holding 2" rockets and looking slightly embarrassed, as well they might. The rockets are, for God's sake, 3 feet long and weigh 10 lbs each. You could put one underneath each arm and walk off whistling. These are to sort of rockets we used to put in milk bottles and fire off on Guy Fawke's Night. And if anybody has suggested replacing any fighter's guns with rockets it certainly hasn't been me. I simply said they could -- repeat, could -- have been trialed as supplementary anti-bomber weapons.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this point LJ. You consider that the RAF should have been trialling a variety of weapons and tactics during the height of the Battle of Britain. Having a tad of experience in the trials business myself, I consider that that was not a time to engage in such experiments.

As others have mentioned, the rockets would have added drag and launch rails were not able to be jettisoned.

However, the point is that as you rightly say, the WGr-21 was a much larger rocket than the 2”. Yet even that failed to break up USAAF bomber formations to any serious degree once Allied aircrew got used to them.

Originally Posted by littlejim

A favourable air situation over the Channel? Pity it wasn't favourable enough to supply adequate RAF fighter cover to poor bloody Edmonde and his Navy boys when they were torn to bits in their clapped out old biplanes by 190's, with the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau enjoying the show.

I assume that you mean Lt Cdr Eugene Esmonde LJ, one of the most valiant of all posthumous VC awards to aircrew.

It is clear in Galland’s autobiography how much planning by the Luftwaffe and Kreigsmarine had gone into the Channel dash to assure local air superiority. Through a combination of this effective German preparation, poor weather and poor British inter-service coordination (largely on the part of the RAF imho) the British Joint response was critically delayed. What Spitfires that did turn up to provide top cover for Esmonde’s particular formation were therefore quickly overwhelmed by Galland’s fighters.

As I said, Fighter Command could only realistically be able to obtain a favourable air situation over the Channel rather than full air superiority at all times.

Originally Posted by littlejim

No, Rommel didn't get to Cairo. But if he had done we'd have known who to blame, wouldn't we?

As Moggee has mentioned, blaming one single service for your hypothetical campaign outcome is fairly pointless. I would suggest that all campaigns during WWII and subsequently must be considered in a Joint context as each component benefits (or for that matter is compromised) from the effects of the others. Even in campaigns where the outcome was apparently down to a single service (eg the Battle of Britain), wider Joint influences were always at play; in this respect, the North African Campaign was more Joint than most.

However, Rommel didn’t get to Cairo. He didn’t get to Suez. He didn’t get to the Iraqi oilfields. Shall we therefore move on?

Originally Posted by littlejim

If you can quote an example of an RAF officer with similar prescience, I'd be delighted to hear about him.

Themanwho has already mentioned Dowding, an individual who saw the potential for radar. However, unlike others, he looked beyond the basic sensor and conceived from the mid 1930s the requirement for a wider C2 structure which has pretty much served as the basis for Integrated Air Defence Systems ever since.

Alfie has also correctly identified Cheshire and Cochrane. The former displayed an appreciation for strategic operations generally and target marking in particular which few have matched. Cochrane meanwhile was renowned for his innovative thinking and willingness to encourage new tactics.

I would also add AVM Edward Addison, AOC of the unique 100 Gp of Bomber Command and a superb electronics expert. Under his vision and energy evolved an incredibly effective EW organisation of Electronic Attack, SIGINT and fighter assets. The subsequent employment of aircraft such as the EC-130H Compass Call, EA-6B Prowler, EF-111 Raven, F-105, F-4G and F-16CJ Wild Weasels employed so successfully during Vietnam, Iraq, Bosnia and numerous other ops by the US can all trace their lineage back directly to such innovations.

There is also of course the great Sir Keith Park, the only Allied Air Commander who displayed an exceptional grasp of such a wide variety of Air Power disciplines throughout the European, Mediterranean, Middle East and Far East theatres and who proved instrumental to success in the Battle of Britain, Malta and SEAC.

I think that should do it for the night!

Regards,
MM

PS From your location LJ, I'm hoping that you're unaffected by the horrendous bush fires affecting Australia. However, Pommy thoughts are with you Aussies for what is rapidly emerging as your worst ever natural disaster. :(

Originally Posted by Magic_Mushroom

Originally Posted by littlejim

The attrition caused by the sweeps was all in the Germans' favour.

Have I ever suggested otherwise? OCA ops such as those conducted between 1941 and 1943 always favour the defender in terms of losses; the Luftwaffe discovered this for themselves in 1940, and again during Bodenplatte on New Years Day 1945. However, with the Empire Air Training Scheme and thousands of other aircrew being trained in the USA, the Allies had a far greater capacity to replace losses.

Originally Posted by littlejim

As I seem to keep saying ad nauseam. You tied down two bloody squadrons out of an entire air force!

Again, I would suggest you miss the entire point and remain preoccupied with the single engined fighter v fighter issue.

Just as a matter of interest, regarding deep sweeps such as these, that a major proponent of these in the Great War was 1st Viscount "Boom" Trenchard, who maintained constant Deep Offensive Patrols over and behind German lines over the Western Front throughout 1917 with the RFC. His argument was that opperating 1 mile over the lines was offensive -- so opperating 10 miles over must be deeply offensive.

The effect of this was that German morale suffered due to enemy aircraft opperating constantly over their lines. Of course the offset is that RFC morale also suffered consequently. Here they opperated in inferior machines (as described by Air Vice Marshall A.S.G. Lee -- Lieutenant in the RFC in 1917 -- in his book No Parachute [1968]), with a prevailing westerly wind that meant that crossing the lines with a dud engine, or escaping with a jammed weapon, or damage, was difficult, and so British losses were almost 4 times their german counter parts.

Of course this provides LJ with more ammunition for Pom-bashing (i admit a certain fondness for the nickname of Poms it must be said), and at a time when the RFC was under strength any way, these attacks were not too advisable. As MM said, deep attacks always favour the defenders, and I shan't restate the examples he has already given.

Hi, guys,

I hate to say it, but there are some strange ideas around here.

Flight, hi,

The fighters release the mines when they're dropped. They don't drag them through the sky behind them. At least I don't think that's what the RAF had in mind. And they invented the long aerial mine. The reason why mines are preferable to guns is because if you make an head on attack on a enemy formation at the same height as yourself you're running every chance of getting killed in a collision. With mines you can achieve the same result at a higher altitude, even if it's only a couple of hundred feet further up. That's enough to massively reduce the chance of going head on into a plane coming the other way. But maybe I'm talking to the wrong guy. Maybe you like driving against the traffic on a motorway for kicks.

Anyway, if you're in a Hurricane and there are 109's coming down on top, you won't be shooting at anything with anything, not if you want to stay alive. Exactly as you said, you'll be spiraling down in tight turns hoping the bastards in the Bfs behind you won't follow you down.

I can't think of anything more unproductive than Hurricanes attempting to reach the altitude of the escorting 109's. It's an obvious invitation to be bounced by a much better fighter. The way it was supposed to work was that the Spits tried to deal with the 109's while the Hurricanes went straight for the bombers. Believe me, Hurricanes were too low down on the food chain to deliberately go after 109's. Especially after the F model came in. The Hurricane had a lot of good qualities but it reached the end of the road as a fighter by 1941. Against the Germans anyway. Of course the Hurricanes which survived an initial bounce and were flown by experienced pilots were still dangerous. But I can't recall reading of one single occasion of Hurricanes ever getting above 109's and bouncing them. The performance wasn't there. If you think you'd have been happy to fly Hurricanes against 109's fine. But if you ever get a chance to read a book by a fellow called Laddie Lucas, Wing Commander Lucas, called "Malta: the thorn in Rommel's side" I recommend you browse through it. You may decide that you'd need a lot more than gaffer tape to survive for long in a Hurricanes versus 109's environment without Spitfire backup.

Incidentally, there were proximity fuses being tested in 1940. Photo electric cells in 3" AA rockets. The shadow of the aircraft was supposed to set them off. Not a great idea, I suppose, not in our . . . sorry, your climate.

Moggie,

Why am I utterly convinced about something? Why are you utterly convinced that I said I was? I said it was an interesting idea which could have been tried out. And by tried out, I mean on one aircraft. I suggest you take a second glance at my last post and see if it says anything different from what I've just said here.

As for the finest minds of whatever, I think they were probably too busy with a lot of very urgent problems in 1940 to try something which would have needed a thousand forms to be filled out before anything actually happened. The British armed forces have always worked like that. No senior British officer has ever said: "That's such a crazy idea it just might work, son. There's a plane over there, why don't you take that and try your idea out on it?"

Mind you, I don't suppose they say it in any Air Force nowadays, not with what planes cost now. The days are gone when a General could give a former enlisted man the keys to a squadron of bombers and tell him to keep cramming .5's in the noses until there was no room for anymore. General Kenney again.

Anyway, Wellington said very firmly that he didn't want any rocket batteries at the Battle of Waterloo, so that ends that argument.

Alfie, hi,

Who mentioned RAF innovators? Innovating is finding yourself in a situation and working out the best way to deal with it. The word I used was prescience. It means reading the future accurately and planning for it. Dowding certainly did that, and he was well ahead of his colleges in understanding the implications of radar and the command and control systems needed to use it. But twenty years ahead of his time? I think not. Not even two. The very first major daylight raids the RAF attempted in December 1939 were detected and tracked by German radar, which vectored fighters onto the Wellingtons for a wholesale massacre. That was just three months after the war started. The British and Germans were neck and neck in radar until the British invented the cavity magnetron, possibly the greatest British scientific breakthrough of the entire war and a tremendous secret.

Until, of course, a cavity magnetron was presented to the Germans as a free gift by Harris and Bomber Command. Suffice it to say that Harris enabled the U-boats to develop ECM gear to pick up high powered radar transmissions they wouldn't otherwise have even suspected were tracking them. Google 'Naxos radar receiver'. And this at a time when Britain was nearer to losing the Battle of Atlantic than at any time in the war and the U-boats were sinking a hundred merchant ships a month.

Talboy, Grand Slam. Very useful weapons, did some good work. The problem was that almost every target they hit was overrun by the Allied Armies within weeks of the bombing anyway. Turning the Tirpitz upside down was a nice party trick but she was no longer capable of putting to sea anyway. But I hope nobody will mind me pointing out that these kind of pin point attacks with highly accurate and destructive weapons was the very antithesis of the way Bomber Command had fought its usual war of dropping thousands of tons of bombs on cities -- when it could find them. One or two squadrons and a handful of special bombs was not worth the 10,000 million pounds which was what Bomber Command cost the UK in 1945 currency. ('The Bombers", Norman Longmate).

These big numbers always baffle me. I have to put them into something I can imagine. A Colossus class aircraft carrier built in 1945 cost 2.5 million. So Bomber Command cost as much as 4,000 aircraft carriers. The results it achieved were ludicrously overpriced. A thousand million pounds for BC might have been a reasonable deal.

The dams, Alfie. Bad news, old son, they bombed the wrong ones. They breached the Mohne and the Eder, but the Mohne and the Sorpe should have been the primary targets. The Sorpe controlled the flow of vital cooling water to the Ruhr steel industry. Without the Sorpe, in Speer's words: "The steel industry would have been suffering for months and months". Another quote from the Minister for War Production alias Speer: "The British experts failed to grasp the unimportance of the Eder dam to the Ruhr valley".

Yes, by golly, the RAF did fly some aircraft powered by jet engines. The first one took off only 15 months after the first German jet flew. The one type of British jet fighter to fly during the war wasn't much of an improvement on contemporary allied piston engined aircraft. The Me 262 jet fighter and the Arado 234 jet bomber were a whole new generation of war planes.

Airborne ASW equipment? See previous notation on this post. As fast as British scientists invented it Bomber Command grabbed it and crashed the whole box of tricks in Germany -- or Rotterdam, in the case of the 10 centimetre radar equipment.

Auntie Stella, hi,

'Raining death down on the Hun', hey? Were you ever a scriptwriter for 'Ripping Yarns'? From 1939 to the end of 1942 Bomber Command killed more British aircrew than it did German civilians. Perhaps that was one of the reasons we were losing the war hand over fist until the Yanks came in.

Chimpchocker, hi,

Yes, we had exactly the same kind of system defending some of our airfields during the BoB. Two inch rockets pulling up a length of wire. The idea was that if an enemy bomber snagged the wire a parachute at each end of the cable would deploy and cause the aircraft to crash. The system was called PAC, parachutes and cable. The good news is that one of them did actually bring down a Dornier at Kenley on the 18th August, '40. The bad news is that the Dornier had already been hit by a Bofors gun, was on fire and wasn't going anywhere but down anyway.

MM, hi,

No, no bush fires here, thankfully. I'm on the other side of the Nullarbor. Only the occasional cross fire here to contend with.

I didn't say the British fought poorly. I said they fought well below their weight. They did their best but it was like taking a strong, courageous and untrained man and putting him in the ring against a professional boxer. Far too many the British blows went wide and far too many of the German punches landed. That's history -- or my take on it, anyway. But if you want to sing "Rule Britannia" and let it go at that, so be it. I certainly don't expect the West to be involved in another world war, so the lessons from '39 -'45 don't really amount to a row of beans. I'm only here to annoy you, you little blue devil.

(Of course all bets are off if the Yanks invade Pakistan and the Pakis use their home grown nukes to turn the Mid East oil fields into burning wreckage. Expect the Chinese to be along about ten minutes afterwards to sort things out -- their way).

Royal Navy offensive ops? We're talking Coastal forces and the handful of destroyers trying to protect the convoys from the S-boats? A few Commando raids. SOE ops. Mine laying and mine clearing. This was the Empire's schwerpunkt? This was where the war was going to be won or lost? I would have said that in early 1941 the centre of gravity was in the Middle East. I thought it was all about stopping Rommel from driving his tanks through Cairo and taking the Iraqi oil fields?. But you're telling me I was wrong? Fair enough. Those 300 tanks that Churchill sailed straight through the Med in April '41 to Egypt in a desperate attempt to stop Rommel must have been sent to the wrong address. And Heaven forfend some Spitfires could have been sent with them. We already know that could never have happened, don't we? After all, it wasn't the RAF's war, they couldn't be blamed for not wanting to get involved in it.

Blaming one single service for a defeat isn't logical? You mean, if I'm playing a game of football and the goalie doesn't show up, and I have to substitute with a pensioner fan, losing the game has nothing to do with the missing goalie? Yes, I can see the logic in that -- provided I drink enough beer.

There's a concept in alternative history stories called the point of departure, POD. It marks the point where an author takes the situation as it was and then moves the chess pieces around in a new way, trying to guess what might have happened if somewhere along the line history had changed, either by accident or design. As far as moving Spits overseas is concerned, my POD has been May '41. I think if you could be bothered to go back over my posts you'd find that's been my POD on that particular subject ever since we got involved in the interminable discussion. But if those ships were sailing anyway, what the hell, let's make it April '41. Or is that against the rules?

Having said that, if supporting Russia after it was invaded is the POD, then the Middle East is even more important. Firstly in supplying the USSR. The Trans-Iranian railroad (opened 1939) was the safest and most convenient way of moving goods into Russia. But to use that it was clearly necessary to stop the Germans reaching Iran. The second way to help the Russians was to divert as much of the German armed forces as possible away from Russia. Unfortunately Rommel had already proved how few German formations he needed to checkmate the British Army in the Middle East. Hitler launched 166 Divisions into Russia and over 4,000 tanks. Rommel got as far as El Alamein with 3 very reduced divisions and 36 tanks. What the German high command sent to North Africa was a prima donna general and a glorified corporal's guard to set an example to the Italians. Looked at in terms of numbers that wasn't going to help the Russian Army much.

But in the air, that was a bit different. Malta kept attracting the Luftwaffe like flies to a honey pot. At its peak effort the Luftwaffe was mounting almost 5,000 sorties a month against Malta. If anybody wanted to fight the Luftwaffe, there was no need to be farting around over France. You could shoot at as many German aircraft as you liked over Malta, and do it over friendly territory. Even the AA guns were supposed to be on your side -- when they had ammunition to fire. Even with the handful of fighters that Malta actually had it was able to draw the Luftwaffe 2 Air Fleet from Moscow to Sicily. Every sortie flown by a German aircraft against Malta or anywhere else in the Middle East was one less sortie against the Russians.

If only we could have had more fighters there. If only we'd had a fraction of those 500 transport planes the German had in their Air Force to bring in fuel and supplies. Or fighter aircraft which had the range to fly directly from Gibraltar to Malta. Or a huge bomb proof underground hangar like Mussolini built on the Italian fortress island of Pantelleria. With one or all of those things we could have staged a genuine small scale Battle of Britain over Malta and pulled still more aircraft away from the Eastern Front.

Or we could have built six carriers with some of the money that was wasted on the RAF, sent them into the Med with hundreds of fighters and bombers aboard, torn Rommel's supply lines apart, sunk his supply ships, bombed Luftwaffe 2 into wreckage on its landing fields, dropped a few bombs near the Vatican for fun, reversed course and chopped the Afrika Korp up into raw meat. All in about a week.

Except that the carriers would have been useless because the British hadn't developed any decent carrier aircraft in time to be of any use in the war and American aircraft were only starting to trickle through to the FAA. Neither did we have anybody in the Navy or the RAF at high level who had even the vaguest idea of how powerful a weapon carrier aviation could be in the right hands. It's interesting though to consider that at the time we needed a strong carrier strike force in the Med, the Japanese were sending exactly that kind of maritime borne air power into the Indian Ocean. It was supposed to be a British lake, as the Mediterranean was supposed to be an Italian one. But Admiral Nagumo and his six carriers soon changed that.

The final scorecard after ten days of Japanese carrier operations was Tricomalee badly bombed, Colombo badly bombed (both British naval bases). 1 British carrier sunk (no fighters carried), 2 British cruisers sunk, 2 destroyers sunk, 1 armed merchant cruiser sunk, 1 corvette sunk, 1 sloop sunk, 23 British merchant ships sunk, 40 plus British aircraft destroyed. The Japanese lost 20 plus aircraft out of the 350 embarked. Not a carrier was scratched.

So, no British carrier fleet to draw German aircraft away from Russia to deal with the sudden emergency on the Southern flank. No possible POD there. Pity. Nagumo could only stay around for a couple of weeks because his carriers were needed in the Pacific for the invasion of Midway. British carriers in the Med would have had no such compulsion to depart.

Incidentally, on the subject of naval fighters, when the prototype XF4U-1 Vought Corsair first flew, during the BoB, it had small bomb bays in the wings to carry 40 anti-aircraft bombs. Which is something I've always wondered about. Was the USN following the aerial mine developments in the UK? And were their bombs aimed at the US Army bombers as a political weapon in the constant battles for Congressional funding?

Incidentally, on the subject of the A-36's dive brakes, why not take a look at this url: http://www.aerofiles.com/divebrakes.html

The poster is the son of an A-36 pilot who discussed the aircraft with his son many times. This extract gives a general idea of what the site has to say:

"My father stated he has never heard of this "wiring shut" of dive brakes. In fact, he adamantly states that the dive brakes were an awesome addition to this aircraft that, in his opinion, was the best "purpose-built" low-level fighter-bomber he ever flew, including P-40, P-47, P-51, F-80, F-86. He said that the A-36 with air brakes extended during a vertical dive became very stable and would allow the pilot to drop his ordinance "into a pickle barrel." I have attended several of his reunions and have heard similar comments from other A-36 pilots. "

If one of the most desperate battles in British history was a bad time to be trying out new weapons, when was a good time?

Homeland defence was paramount for Churchill? I thought he said that the only thing which really frightened him during the war was the Battle of the Atlantic. It may have frightened him but he was clearly completely incapable of passing on one iota of apprehension about the subject to Bomber Command. Apparently Harris thought that all Britain's imports came out of a magic cave somewhere underneath the Cotswalds.

I still don't understand this Bay of Biscay suggestion. Are we talking Spitfires or Mustangs? The most southerly operation of UK based Spits that I've read about was in one of AL Deere's books, where he flew on daylight escort to Brest harbour -- in a specially modified long range Spit with an extra fuel tank underneath one wing. I'd be surprised to learn that normal Spits ever flew anti-shipping escort missions further south than that -- surprised and interested. As for the Mustangs, they probably could have patrolled over the northernmost tip of the Bay of Biscay for some period of time. It just seems a funny place to find Army Co-Operation Command aircraft.

The British didn't lose the war? Well, we lost our money, our empire, our position of power in the world and everything that went with it, exactly as Chamberlain foresaw would happen when he was desperately trying to hold onto a sane position in a world gone mad. We survived the war, we didn't win it. The Russians and Americans won it. We salvaged our pride but everything else went to the knacker's yard and the pawn shop. The Suez fiasco settled for ever the question about where the war left Britain. We couldn't even bluff the Egyptians anymore.

Still, better to fight Hitler than not fight Hitler.

Our problem was that we did it so amateurishly. Our salvation was that our opponent decided to fight us, and the Russians, and the United States of America, all at the same time. I wouldn't count on ever coming across an enemy that dumb ever again. What with the Kaiser and Hitler, we've already used up more than our fair share of luck,

Cheers.

Given that aero companies had time, still, to work on 'pet projects' not in response to air ministry specification, such as Boulton Paul working on a prototpe version of the defiant with 12 .303 machine guns and no fraser nash turret, making an aircraft with performance between that of a hurricane and spitfire, whilst being a bit tougher than a hurricane, i think it's fair to say that had the 2 inch rocket idea been worth it at the time, it would have been persued. I cannot see why you asume that you're infinitely smarter than the great aircraft designers of the time, such as R. J. Mitchell or Sydney Camm.

"Anyway, Wellington said very firmly that he didn't want any rocket batteries at the Battle of Waterloo, so that ends that argument."
Yes, during the entire Hundred Days campaign, the Rocket troop distinguished itself once noteably, at Quatre Bras, where a single rocket flew straight under a french artillery piece, and blew it up. All the other countless rockets launched during the battle hopelessly missed, or did little damage, and one even scattered a troop of british light dragoons, rather than doing its job and scattering the french cavalry. That rather suggests that he had a point. Why did Wellington not want the rocket troop? It was too unreliable, unpredictable and ineffective. It doesn't mean that it would develop into a very useful weapon in today's world, but at the time it wasn't really worth it.

However, on the sbject of britain losing her empire and financially crippling herself, you're absolutely right, although i don't think we stumbled to towards it in quite the incompetant and bumbling fasion that you make out.

LJ, good to hear you weren't a prawn on the Barbee!

What's the fascination with the aerial mine? A weapon which was (by your own post) used in combat, and then abandoned(when everything up to and including the kitchen sink was being pressed into service), that to me is suggests it was found wanting. Do you honestly believe that such a device would have been effective in the Battle of Britain? Considering the amount of time taken to get a "Big Wing" of clean fighters into the air and pointed at the enemy, let alone into contact, it seems unlikely in the extreme that mine carrying aircraft could be placed quickly enough in the path of oncoming enemy formations to find out if dangling bomblets on bits of string at exactly the right moment in front of Fritz would have any effect whatsoever. Or is this a red herring?

As to the A36, you may well be right, certainly Peter C Smith (Straight Down) infers the tales of dive brakes being wired up were apocryphal. But the fact of the matter is that neither the USAAF or RAF ordered these planes in any large quantity; when there was a choice between and A36 or a vanilla P51 or Spit, both went for the latter. Whether this was because of a lack of performance or because their use didn't fit in with the tactical doctrine of the time, judge for yourself. MM's point on the utility of dive bombers in the climate of Burma rings true, also remember that the Desert Air Force was pioneering CAS procedures and if they'd felt the need for a dive bomber, I imagine they'd have yelled long and hard for it. In fact what they did throughout the war was strap bombs on pretty much any fighter going (including Spitfires in Italy), and using the cab rank system plaster with impressive accuracy anything that was in the way. (Hugh Dundas, Flying Start(?)).

Moving away from the air element to the larger picture, your comment on the British under-performing merits thought. Under performing against what measure? The Empire was well on the wane by the end of the first world war, our proportion of global industrial production had been shrinking since the mid 19th century, our investment in the military had been sorely neglected between the wars... although not by any means a paper tiger, Britain was not in any shape in 1939 to conduct a war against the axis powers. But we did. The bankrupting of this nation was not something unforeseen, indeed the Treasury informed the Govt in 1939 that we had insufficient funds to conduct a war for more than two years (and since we'd defaulted on the US loans from WW1, we would have to pay up front for any help from across the pond). But we fought on alone for nearly 2 years, pawning the imperial silver to do it, and contributed significantly to the defeat of our enemies throughout its six year length. Hardly the effect of fighting below our weight. (The Rise & Fall of The British Empire, Lawrence James; Blood Tears and Folly, Len Deighton)

Personally I consider the fact that what was once the greatest empire the world had ever seen almost destroyed itself willingly in order to stop the march of Fascism across the world, something to be inordinately proud of, rather than lamented.

To deride Dowding for not being 20 years ahead of his time like Kenney was in designing ONE particular item of ordnance, seems petty in the extreme. Are you suggesting that Dowding should have come up with Radar, and a command system to best utilise its data in 1920? Oh come on... the fact that Kenney designed a munition with a specific tactical use extant at the time, and then twenty years later when faced with a tactical situation requiring such a weapon decided to use it, is not surprising. That is not to denigrate the man, more to put this one point into context.

As to the accuracy of Rockets against armour, have a read of the Kiwi pilot Desmond Scott's memoire (Typhoon Pilot). In order to hit a panzer, pinpoint accuracy was pretty much the order of the day, and by his account, not particularly unusual.

LJ,

Several contributors have made the point about the performance penalty that aerial mine would have on the fighter aircraft tasked with deploying it. I am sure that no-one thought that the mine would actually be dragged behind the aircraft, but rather they were pointing out the penalty that would come from the weight of any installation, either internal or external, and the drag of any external fittings associated with carriage of the weapon - both before and after release. Regardless of whether the fighter-interceptor aircraft is solely tasked with attacking the bomber formations, the penalty in climb performance remains significant as does the reduction in ability to engage in combat with, or evade, the escort fighters. You seem to be alone in advocating mines as "preferable to guns" in head-on attacks whereas I think that the idea is more aptly described as 'crackpot'.

Innovation does not mean "finding yourself in a situation and working out the best way to deal with it". Innovation actually means the successful introduction of new ideas, methods or equipment. Invention is the first occurrence of an idea and innovation is the first attempt to carry it out in practice.

You described Gen Kenney as an officer with prescience, but his use of the parafrag bomb and fitting of heavier forward-firing armament to medium bombers are actually examples of invention and innovation. The development of a small and specialist tactical munition, laudable as it was, does not seem to be a more noteworthy example of prescience than that displayed by many other airpower advocates between the wars. Your assertion that the RAF did not seem capable of producing similar "lets try it" technocrats does not stand-up examination, as shown in to the the list of RAF innovations that I quoted. Of course there will be aspects to all innovations that, with hindsight, can be criticised but the examples quoted do not support your picture of a technophobic, staid service . Op Chastise may well have targeted the wrong dams but it remains an example of innovative employment of airpower.

You are clearly highly critical of the British Grand-Strategic level plan to fight Germany with a strategic bombing campaign. This debate has gone on for years and is often stoked by critics with an anti-RAF stance. The claim that Germany could have been defeated without a strategic bomber offensive takes the "what-if?" debate so far away from the true course of events that it is a futile exercise.

LJ, I think that your "POD" style of examining history is interesting but you focus too much on the capabilities and deployment of individual weapons systems. World War 2 was a conflict of attrition and it was decided by the abilities of the protagonists to out-produce each other, both in terms of equipment and trained men. For example, there is no doubt that man-for-man and tank-for-tank, the German Panzer forces were superior to those of the Allies. However, the ability of the Allies to produce, man and support thousands-upon-thousands of Shermans (or T-34s) negated any qualitative German superiority. Similarly the massed production of P-51Ds was much more important to the Allies than missed opportunity to better employ the A-36. Conversely, the superior Me 262 made little impact because it could not be fielded or fuelled in sufficient numbers.

You will always find individuals who say that their particular unit or weapon was mis-employed, but they tend to be from the tactical or possibly operational level. Fundamentally, the Allied strategic-level planning of WW2 was based on deploying a greater number of units than the enemy, even if individually they were perhaps sub-optimally employed.