WW1 Paved the Way for the Battle of Britain.

[ElAurens]

The fact remains that the Luftwaffe lost a lot of aircraft, both in Poland and in the Battle of France, that seriously degraded their abilities.

Add the losses between the time of Dunkirk and the "start" of the BoB in August and it is clear that the Luftwaffe could not sustain a campaign to "take" Great Britain. It's laugable to think that they could.

The mistakes made by Hitler, Goering and the OKL only added to the issue.

The Luftwaffe was a very young service. There was no depth of experience in their officer corps, unlike the RAF, which is of course the world's oldest independent air force.

Like most of the German High Command, they suffered from strategic blindness. Too concerned with tactics and not enough with logistics.

[Kongo-Otto]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

The fact remains that the Luftwaffe lost a lot of aircraft, both in Poland and in the Battle of France, that seriously degraded their abilities.

Add the losses between the time of Dunkirk and the "start" of the BoB in August and it is clear that the Luftwaffe could not sustain a campaign to "take" Great Britain. It's laugable to think that they could.

The mistakes made by Hitler, Goering and the OKL only added to the issue.

The Luftwaffe was a very young service. There was no depth of experience in their officer corps, unlike the RAF, which is of course the world's oldest independent air force.

Like most of the German High Command, they suffered from strategic blindness. Too concerned with tactics and not enough with logistics.

The Kriegsmarine "laughable"
The Luftwaffe just a bunch on incompetent loons.
The whole Army probably just Feldwebels like Schultz was.
Well with such a bunch of really incompetent guys we gave you a pretty good fight for almost 6 years.

[winny]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

"Of all Germany's possible enemies, Britain is the most dangerous." - Oberst Beppo Schmid

That's about the only thing he got right.. He was a huge reason why the LW was so badly let down by it's commanders.

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

The fact remains that the Luftwaffe lost a lot of aircraft, both in Poland and in the Battle of France, that seriously degraded their abilities.

I partially agree. Poland was a victory march for the Luftwaffe, they wiped out the Polish Air Force in a matter of days .Not to downplay the PAF, they fought bravely but were essentially steamrolled. They lost 250-300 aircraft in total, but only 93 of these were to enemy action: 13 Bf 109, 9 Bf 110, 27 Do 17, 25 He 111, 16 Ju 87, 3 Hs 123. This probably includes losses to everything, ie. Polish AA. PAF fighters had little chance as they could hardly catch up with LW bombers. As far as the losses go though, the LW had more and better aircraft (they dumped obsolate versions like Jumo engined 109s and 110s for example) by the end of September 1939 than at the start.

France was another matter, there the LW indeed had serious losses, as a matter of fact it rivaled the losses as though the only serious was the bombers which strenght fell by about 200 aircraft compared to the begining of the campaign, but all other strenght was maintained or even improved. As a sidenote, they handed the RAF's and the FAF their respective assess (the former lost some 900 aircraft, the latter was simply annihilated) and were instrumental in creating a strategical position in Western Europe that was simply not going to change until the Americans entered the war. The French Army, the only one that could hope to defeat the German army was defeated, and the Brits were kicked out of the continent, and everyone knew they just can't come back on their own.

Add the losses between the time of Dunkirk and the "start" of the BoB in August and it is clear that the Luftwaffe could not sustain a campaign to "take" Great Britain. It's laugable to think that they could.

Laughable or not, they did exactly that, from mid-August 1940 to mid-May 1941. With the war industry on peacetime footing. Even with the Kriegsmarine's weakness that prohibited a landing (certainly in 1940), they could keep up an air campaign until Britain sinks into the sea..

The Luftwaffe was a very young service. There was no depth of experience in their officer corps, unlike the RAF, which is of course the world's oldest independent air force.

Silly. First of all all this empty boasting about the RAF - I find it difficult to find a talented officer amongst the rows of aristocratic idiots, to be frank. At least I can find no other reason why they appeared to have no single idea what to do with all those aircraft during the whole war. Certainly between 1939 and 1940 they seemed to have done nothing but f.ing up all the time - BC was forced to bomb at night when they could hit virtually nothing, the expediationary air force they sent over to the continent was wiped out with nearly 1000 aircraft lost, and as for Dunkerque, well, they managed to score of 92 German aircraft, with only 37 fighters amongst them, for the loss of 106 RAF fighters.

Secondly that 'very young air service' had a top brass made up by people who were flying in combat before the 'world's oldest independent air force' came into being, with top/mid-level commanders like Moelders, Osterkamp Richthofen, Sperrle, Stumpf, Kesselring etc. who had seen actual combat flying and organisation in Spain. A little reading wouldn't hurt you as a matter of fact.. They had top notch aircraft to do their bidding, and in sufficient numbers, and the service was technologically advanced - look at the bomb sights, or blind bombing equipment for example, the RAF simply didn't have such, neither it had, on avarage either fighters like the Luftwaffe had (mostly Hurricanes) nor bombers (mostly Wellingtons and Blenheims), nor close support aircraft (err... Battle )

Considering how much younger and more inexperienced they were supposed to be, they seem to have built a better and larger air force on all levels by 1940.

[Blakduk]

It's quite silly to question the LW as being the preeminent airforce in the world in 1940- they were better equipped and better led in tactics than then RAF. During the BoB the RAF learned some very hard lessons, the ill-conceived Defiant and 'Vic' formations are prime examples. In 1941 the RAF's performance over France was pathetic- the attrition in Spitfires alone was almost criminally negligent.
The BoB campaign was really aimed at imposing a cost on the British and challenging the will of their citizens to continue hostilities against Germany when they were cast out of the continent of Europe. The intransigence of Churchill and the unexpected resilience of the populace were what thwarted the German offensive.
The British failed to learn the lesson however and made exactly the same mistakes against the Germans when they started to take the offensive in the air. The Germans developed a coordinated air defence, chose which raids to confront, and the German people displayed the same stoicism as the British had when bombs fell on their cities. The RAF performance during the Dieppe raid was a travesty.
What the Germans didn't do however was gear their industry for full war production until Speer took over in late 1943- far too late. The LW never acquired a large enough strategic reserve and each pilot basically flew until he was dead, captured or crippled.

The attrition finished them in the end- their men were men after all, not ubermensch.

[Blakduk]

Kurfurst- the Germans knew about the British radar, but it was so far inferior to the German's that they dismissed it. They failed to realise how the radar information was used as part of an integrated intelligence gathering network to give the RAF dispatchers an almost real-time picture of what was happening.
The British mistakenly overestimated the LW capabilities and geared production to match it- they believed the German propoganda!

[Blakduk]

Back on topic- the fact that the Germans invested a lot of energy into developing the Knickebein radio guidance system may have been stimulated by their difficulties finding targets in WW1. I can't find a direct reference that suggests that but it seems reasonable.

[609_Huetz]

Maybe a bit got lost in translation here: of course Schmidt, Goering and the LW were aware of radar, that's why they initially focused their raids on those as well.

What they did underestimate was the effectiveness of the RAF as long as they could fly intercept missions only and did not have to waste fuel and their pilot's strenght by sending up patrol after patrol in anticipation of the big one.

In addition, the LW didn't seem to be aware what they had to do in order to keep radar down.

Back OT, I do not think that the Germans learned much from their Gotha and Zeppeling raids on Britain, except (as pointed out by Blakduk) the need for targeting systems to increase precision of navigation and bombing.

What they did not learn is that in order to keep up a strategic bombing campaign you will have to find a cure for the disease, not the symptoms. That means you can not excpect to win such a campaign by only bombing airfields and forcing the enemy to fight it out, that's when the airwar is starting to resemble the worst battles of attrition in the trenches of WW1.

What the USAAF and Bomber Command did very well during the later stages (despite bombing the cities) was their choice of targets. A/C factories, fuel depots, training facilities etc..