A Bigger RAF Battle of Britain Win

[Nonny]

Despite just winning the Battle of Britain, the RAF would have been able to bring down hundreds if not 1000s of more planes if they would have had 20mm Hispano cannons in 1940, instead of the often innefective 0.303 Brownings. Could they actually have wrought such losses on the Luftwaffe that Barbarossa would have had to have been delayed or called off altogether?

[Brilliantlight]

Originally Posted by Nonny

Despite just winning the Battle of Britain, the RAF would have been able to bring down hundreds if not 1000s of more planes if they would have had 20mm Hispano cannons in 1940, instead of the often innefective 0.303 Brownings. Could they actually have wrought such losses on the Luftwaffe that Barbarossa would have had to have been delayed or called off altogether?

Doubt it, Hitler clearly wanted to take on Russia ASAP.

[NHBL]

The Battle of Britian can be no bigger a German catastrophe than Germany lets it be. All the Luftwaffe has to do is stop attacking, and the losses stop. It's a more one sided victory for the RAF, but without many more German losses, just fewer RAF ones.

[Brilliantlight]

Originally Posted by NHBL

The Battle of Britian can be no bigger a German catastrophe than Germany lets it be. All the Luftwaffe has to do is stop attacking, and the losses stop. It's a more one sided victory for the RAF, but without many more German losses, just fewer RAF ones.

Good point.

[Derek Jackson]

Was there any chance in 1940-41 that the RAF could have attacked Nazi airbases in occupied Europe and done real damage?

The point at which Britain was in real danger in OTL was when the Nazis were targetting our (Britain's) military air power

[PMN1]

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

Was there any chance in 1940-41 that the RAF could have attacked Nazi airbases in occupied Europe and done real damage?

The point at which Britain was in real danger in OTL was when the Nazis were targetting our (Britain's) military air power

From Stephen Bungay’s ‘The Most Dangerous Enemy, A History of the Battle of Britain’ (A very good book by the way).

‘Bomber Command’s efforts against the invasion forces peaked during September, when some 60% of its strength was directed against the Channel ports. For several nights the whole of the available force attacked the barges. Between the end of July and the beginning October, 36% of Bomber Command’s sorties were made against invasion shipping and destroyed about 13% of the assembling craft. A further 17% were against airfields and 14% against the German aircraft industry.’

He goes on to say that because of the numbers involved, it would have been very difficult to achieve anything against the airfields.

[PMN1]

Some intresting articles on fighter armament effecticeness

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/OeFFL.htm

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/ideal.htm

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/cannon_pioneers.htm

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/BoB.htm

and the main site they are on

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/

[17inc]

Give the brits the frist combat jets in the opening round .

[pacifichistorian]

Originally Posted by PMN1

He goes on to say that because of the numbers involved, it would have been very difficult to achieve anything against the airfields.

I really do have to wonder about that. Allen's Who Won the Battle of Britain posits attacks, saying the French bases, known to RAF intel, were so crowded, any attack could hardly fail to do damage. (He was FC at the time.) Evem as incompetent as BC was at hitting cities at night, dusk/dawn attacks with Beauforts &/or Battles should've been able to accomplish something...

BTW: It's alive!

[PMN1]

Originally Posted by pacifichistorian

I really do have to wonder about that. Allen's Who Won the Battle of Britain posits attacks, saying the French bases, known to RAF intel, were so crowded, any attack could hardly fail to do damage. (He was FC at the time.) Evem as incompetent as BC was at hitting cities at night, dusk/dawn attacks with Beauforts &/or Battles should've been able to accomplish something...

BTW: It's alive!

From ‘Dowding of Fighter Command’ by Vincent Orange

Page 116

By now, Dowding had foreseen that attacks would be made on his aerodromes and wondered what would happen to fighters dispersed around them. In his usual way, he urged a test and after long argument was allowed to have 30 obsolete Bristol Bulldog fighters spread in a circle on Salisbury Plain. They were attacked for a week in July 1938 by various bombers from high and low level, with large and small bombs, incendiaries and machine gun fire. At the end of the week, Dowding composed a report more devastating than the bombing: 22 tons of high explosive bombs, 1,000 incendiaries and 7,000 rounds of machine gun fire had destroyed three bulldogs, damaged one beyond repair, left 15 with minor damage and 11 completely unharmed. These shockingly bad results indicated that dispersal alone might give fighters a fair chance of survival, unless the Luftwaffe proved to be more accurate than Bomber Command. The test also demonstrated the appalling gulf between theory and practice in RAF doctrine with regard to bombing.

[Lord Brisbane]

Was there any chance in 1940-41 that the RAF could have attacked Nazi airbases in occupied Europe and done real damage?

The post BoB RAF strategy took a number of forms. Agressive fighter sweeps in what came to be known as 'Circus' Operations in 1941 were largely a failure. Achieving little and having a high loss rate.
"10 Jan 1941 - The RAF begins Circus operations - coordinated bomber and fighter attacks on targets in France. Six Blenheims, escorted by six/nine squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes attack supply dumps south of Calais."Source

By Feb 1941, you have Bomber Command using its resources against German cities at night now.

[Astrodragon]

Fighter command could certainly have been much more effective, but as was said earlier, at the point their losses become too high, the Luftwaffe withdraws, as in OTL.

What could have been done?
(1) Develop the 20mm cannon faster - more bombers shot down per attack
(2) rationalise the pilot training program earlier (it was still operating as in peactime!), and use some of teh RAF pilots on desk jobs to reinforce FC instead of barely trained new pilots.
(3) have Lee-Mallory assigned to ground support )its what he was considered an expert at) rather than a fighter group, and replace him with someone who would have worked with Dowding rather than against him.

Taken together, all of these are easy to do, and would have led to the LW calling the BoB off earlier. Wouldnt have made much difference to the war, except FC would have been somewhat stronger in 41.

[Markus]

Originally Posted by Nonny

Despite just winning the Battle of Britain, the RAF would have been able to bring down hundreds if not 1000s of more planes if they would have had 20mm Hispano cannons in 1940, instead of the often innefective 0.303 Brownings.

IIRC the RAF was already working hard to get the 20mm gun into production(see PMN1´s links for details). Personally I´d prefer the cal.50 Vickers machine gun: Not as powerful as the Brownig, but 3.5 times the kinetic energy of a cal.303 and technically unproblematic. But I agree with "NHBL". It´s a Zero sum game. If RAF guns are better the BoB ends sooner.

Originally Posted by Derek Jackson

Was there any chance in 1940-41 that the RAF could have attacked Nazi airbases in occupied Europe and done real damage?

I doubt it. Spitfires simply lacked range. While a P-40 had 150+ gallons of internal fuel, the Spit had a mere 90. Hurricanes had app. 110, but were already becoming obsolescent. And we certainly do not want to send in unescorted bombers, don´t we?

[PMN1]

Originally Posted by Astrodragon

(3) have Lee-Mallory assigned to ground support )its what he was considered an expert at) rather than a fighter group, and replace him with someone who would have worked with Dowding rather than against him.

According to 'Dowding of Fighter Command', it seems Duxford nearly ended up as part of 11 Group. Vincent Orange suggests that if it had, then Bader would have got more of the battle he was after and Leigh Mallory would have been denied his support.

[Riain]

I think there could have been important consequences if the RAF managed a convincing win in the BoB a bit earlier than OTL. I think that such a win could have fostered a sense of security in Britain, that since the RAF can get on top of the Luftwaffe there isn't such a pressing need to keep all of the Spitfires at home for some future threat. Spitfires could be released to Malta a year or more earlier than OTL March 1942, transforming the Med theatre.

[The Dean]

If Mallory had followed orders and not "done his own thing" then there would have been more attacking aircraft intercepted and less losses on the ground. Overall it would have led to an earlier and less expensive victory for the RAF.

[perfectgeneral]

Originally Posted by PMN1

http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/BoB.htm

Well before WW2, the RAF realised that the increasing speeds and toughness of aircraft would call for something more powerful than the .303 MG. Extensive tests in the 1920s of Browning and Vickers .50 calibre HMGs and of the Oerlikon Type S 20mm cannon had provided important information about effectiveness. At that time, a battery of .303s was chosen as the best option (contemporary aircraft being lightly built and unarmoured), but by the mid-1930s it was recognised that a bigger gun was needed. The .50 HMGs were rejected as "neither fish nor fowl" as they were much heavier and slower firing than the .303s, but did not have the benefit of an effective HE shell, and the RAF decided to look for a 20mm cannon. In 1936 RAF staff witnessed a demonstration of the prototype of the French Hispano-Suiza HS.404 in Paris, and thereafter entirely focused their attention on this weapon.

Much effort was made to get the Hispano cannon into service. An ACAS report in November 1938 stated that "recent firing trials against armoured and unarmoured aeroplanes have convinced me that a more powerful weapon than the .303 must be introduced into service as soon as possible; this factor is so important that the policy for development and production must be laid down at once....The 20mm calibre is the minimum which can be accepted....The Hispano gun should be regarded as the immediate step forward...every effort should be made to ensure rapid production." Interest was also expressed in developing a gun of at least 37mm calibre in the longer term, capable of bringing down an aircraft with one hit.

Despite the high priority given to the Hispano, the problems associated with acquiring manufacturing rights, redesigning the gun to imperial rather than metric measurements, setting up a factory and debugging the weapons, delayed the Hispano's general introduction into service until after the Battle was over.

However, one squadron (No.19) of Spitfire Mk 1B fighters, each armed with two Hispanos, was thrown into battle in June 1940. The results were disastrous; the gun did not respond well either to being mounted on its side (done to bury the top-mounted drum magazine within the thin wing) or to being installed in a flexible wing instead of to the rigid engine block it was designed for. Reliability was so poor that the squadron asked for its .303-armed Spitfires back. Later on, the Hispano would be fully debugged and became arguably the best fighter gun of the war, but it was too late when it was needed most!

What we are looking for here is an earlier debug of a gun already on a fast track from 1938 to 1941. If the Air Ministry was prone to snap decisions (ha!) and work started in 1936 then by 1939 the 20mm cannon would be in good shape. That kind of foresight only happens with an ISOT. Dowding was let down by Leigh-Mallory, but Trafford's ambition and drive were such that nothing short of moving Keith Park to the FAA would have satisfied him. I like the idea of Leigh-Mallory in a ground support role to keep him out of the Bob, but I don't think he would co-operate well with the ground forces. I do tend to have a cartoon view of his character though and would love to learn more.

[pacifichistorian]

Originally Posted by PMN1

" fighters dispersed around them."

As I understand it, crowding at Luftwaffe bases in France OTL 7-8/40 wouldn't have allowed dispersal to an appreciable degree. I will stand correction, however.

Originally Posted by Lord Brisbane

Agressive fighter sweeps in what came to be known as 'Circus' Operations in 1941 were largely a failure. Achieving little and having a high loss rate.
"10 Jan 1941 - The RAF begins Circus operations "

Note the date: 8 months after peak BoB ops.

What could have been done? I can see 2 possibilities, beyond the purely speculative attacks on French bases (in the Pas de Calais, BTW, so Spit range not really an issue):
1) retrain Battle/Defiant pilots on Hurricanes, & Hurricane pilots on Spitfires
2) intercept German raids while forming up over France (which CH/CHL could detect), instead of waiting for them to cross the Channel (I will acknowledge I'm unsure response time would allow this)

[Lord Brisbane]

On your second point, why though? Using up fuel and flying time and fighting them on their turf (giving them home advantage in rescue and AAA), the RAF doesn't achieve much, I can see.

[merlin]

Originally Posted by Astrodragon

Fighter command could certainly have been much more effective .....

What could have been done?
(1) Develop the 20mm cannon faster - more bombers shot down per attack
(2) rationalise the pilot training program earlier (it was still operating as in peactime!), and use some of teh RAF pilots on desk jobs to reinforce FC instead of barely trained new pilots.
(3) have Lee-Mallory assigned to ground support )its what he was considered an expert at) rather than a fighter group, and replace him with someone who would have worked with Dowding rather than against him.

Taken together, all of these are easy to do, and would have led to the LW calling the BoB off earlier. Wouldnt have made much difference to the war, except FC would have been somewhat stronger in 41.

Re: (1) If the Treasury had provided the funds for not just the Whirlwind, the Boulton-Paul P.88s would have been tested, RAF orders the Hercules powered 'A' model wing four wing mounted canon - with an earlier time frame than OTL equiping Hurricanes and/or Spitfires with them, the problems should be solved earlier.
Re: (2) Set up something like the Empire Training Scheme earlier than OTL, I thing the Canadians were against it initially, but at least earlier the Austrlians would have been interested - having the Japanese to worry about!
And (3) Yes, how did Leigh-Mallory get to be in charge of 12 Group in the first place? His experience prior to that was with Army Co-operation - should have been in France. But who to have in his place?